T

he Elections Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu) is urging the local poll body to go on with the drafting of the final voters’ list for the July gubernatorial election, playing down reports of irregularities.

Panwaslu chairman Ramdansyah said that the committee has recommended the Jakarta General Elections Commission (Jakarta KPU) continue finalizing the voters’ list, to be completed on Saturday as scheduled.

“Jakarta KPU should work hard to meet the deadline. The reported violations will be handled later,” Ramdansyah said after a meeting with candidate’s campaign team representatives at the Panwaslu office in Central Jakarta on Wednesday.

A number of political parties and NGOs claimed that they had found irregularities on the potential voters’ list and verification process of between 900,000 to 1.4 million “ghost”, or ineligible, voters out of the 7,044,991 voters on the preliminary list.

The Indonesian Youth Movement Center (P3I) has submitted a list of 947,643 names of alleged ghost voters on the preliminary list to Panwaslu, while five political parties argued that the list of eligible electronic ID (e-ID) card holders only listed 5.6 million voters.

Ramdansyah said that P3I data was based on the list of potential voters (DP4) that was previously estimated by the Jakarta Population and Civil Registration Agency.

“The Jakarta KPU already scratched more than 500,000 voter names from the DP4 before announcing the preliminary list,” he said. Ramdansyah, however, promised that Panwaslu would further investigate the report. “Furthermore, the list of eligible e-ID card holders cannot be used as a basis for a voters list because the e-ID card program has yet to be completed. Jakarta KPU was in accordance with the law when using DP4 from the city administration.”

The campaign team of gubernatorial candidates Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama has also reported the city’s Population and Civil Registration Agency chief Purba Hutapea for alleged violations to the list of potential voters.

Previously, Yusfitriadi, the national coordinator of election watchdog the People’s Voter Education Association (JPRR), said that cancellation or even delay of the voters’ list process could lead to an election delay, which would be prohibitively expensive and unconstitutional.