T

he Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta) said that local election committees at the subdistrict level have begun drafting the final voters’ list (DPT) for the upcoming gubernatorial election.

Aminullah, the KPU’s head of voter data collection, said on Monday that a number of local committees had also completed their DPT.

“Some of them have finalized their voters’ list, but have yet to report their drafts to us. However, there are others who have yet to begin the finalization process,”. “I’m optimistic we can announce the voter’s roll according to the schedule,” Aminullah said.

The commission is scheduled to announce the final voter’s roll by the end of this week.

The voters’ list finalization process was to begin on Friday, but the poll commission decided to delay the preliminary voters’ list (DPS) updating the process following protests from a number of political parties and NGOs who claimed that they had found violations in the list’s verification process.

Last week, chairmen from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), Golkar, the United Development Party (PPP) and the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) claimed that the irregularities had created at least 900,000 ghost or ineligible voters out of 7,044,991 voters on the preliminary list. The parties, who between them share 49 out of the 94 seats at the City Council, said that the ghost voters were an indication of the mismanagement of the election, urging the poll body to redo the list and recheck all the voter names.

Gerindra patron Prabowo Subianto put the party’s support behind the New Indonesian Movement (GRIB) to monitor the alleged irregularities.

“Prabowo told us to monitor the election, especially voter data,” said GRIB leader Hercules Rozario Marshal, a former crime lord, as quoted by tempo.co

GRIB claimed that it could conduct the monitoring starting at the neighborhood unit level, up to the community unit level and subdistrict level, by deploying 1,250 people.

Aminullah said that local committees had found a number of irregularities in their respective DPS and had crossed out a number of names. “We have scratched out 10,000 names through our verification process,” he said.

Jakarta’s second direct gubernatorial election date is set for July 11, with six pairs of candidates competing for the votes.

Separately, youth activists came together at the Jakarta Institute to voice their concerns about the high number of the abstained voters on the 2007 election, many of them were young and first-time voters.

“To encourage young and first-time voters to use their rights in the upcoming July election, Jakarta needs gubernatorial candidates with a high level of integrity and capacity,” said Rahmat Sholeh, a former student activist during the 1998 reform era. “Many young people have been apathetic about elections because the leaders have failed to live up to their election promises.”

During the public discussion held at the institute on Monday, he revealed that the number of abstained voters at various local elections in Indonesia has increased, reaching 60 percent in 2012. Meanwhile, various reports have said that around 40 percent of registered voters abstained from voting in Jakarta’s 2007 election.

Political observer Siti Zuhro told Monday’s discussion that young and first-time voters in the capital city had to be critical when choosing their future leaders.

“Young voters should think carefully about whether or not the current gubernatorial candidates represent plurality in Jakarta,” she said, adding that in Jakarta an election would become an instrument to measure whether democracy had been rightfully upheld in the country.

If disputes or even conflicts happen in Jakarta during the election, the same as in other regions, then democracy is not being upheld correctly in Indonesia, Siti said.

“As a country becomes more democratic, the number of conflicts should decrease,” she said. (riz)