Jakarta gets ready for election

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(Kompas/Agus Susanto)

With only one day remaining before Jakartans elect their leaders for the next five years, the city’s authorities are preparing anything and everything to ensure that the election day goes as smoothly as possible.

The Jakarta administration held a local consultative forum, locally known as muspida, on Monday to discuss the final preparations for the election.

The meeting was attended by top officials from the Jakarta Police, the Regional Intelligence Agency, the Jakarta Court and the Jakarta Military Command, among other agencies.

In a press conference after the meeting, Governor Fauzi Bowo expressed his administration’s appreciation for all residents, candidates’ supporters and members of the Jakarta Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta) who have worked hard to maintain peace during the 14-day campaign period.

“This year’s campaign period was better than that in 2007,” Fauzi said, adding that there were no significant incidents during the period, such as brawls.

The Jakarta gubernatorial election is scheduled to be held on Wednesday. If everything goes as planned, polling booths will open at around 7 a.m. and will stay open until around 1 p.m,, after which vote counting is expected to begin.

Fauzi said that he had already instructed the Jakarta Public Order Agency (Satpol PP) to help the Election Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu) remove all campaign advertisements throughout the city.

The removal must be done by July 10, he said.

Fauzi, who is seeking re-election, added that he had banned the members of the Satpol PP from getting involved in any part of the election process on Wednesday. “This particular step is taken to prevent the public from forming the opinion that the Satpol PP takes sides and supports one of the candidates.”

Separately, Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Rikwanto said on Monday that the police would deploy 6,401 officers to safeguard 15,811 polling stations all over the city.

“We will deploy the officers to the [polling] stations starting from Tuesday afternoon, to maintain security in the area and to safeguard the ballot boxes in the final hours of the election,” he told reporters.

According to Rikwanto, the police have classified 14,815 of the 15,111 polling stations as “safe locations”.

“They are relatively close to police offices and are not known for conflicts between candidates’ supporters,” he explained.

For this type of polling stations, he said, the police would deploy two police officers and 10 civil defense (hansip) members to guard five polling stations.

Apart from the 14,815 safe stations, the police have also classified 257 polling stations as risk-prone and another 39 as high-risk stations.

Rikwanto refused to disclose the detailed locations of these polling stations.

The police described risk-prone polling stations as those “quite far from police offices and that had a history of conflicts between residents or candidates’ supporters”.

For these places, the city police will deploy two police officers and four hansip members to safeguard two polling stations.

The high-risk places were described as those “far from police offices and occupied by residents who are deeply unsatisfied with the current administration and often held protests”.

Frequent conflicts between candidates’ supporters also placed these voting places in the “high-risk” category. The city police will deploy two police officers and four hansip officers to each polling station.

For the additional 23 “special polling stations”, established at hospitals and penitentiaries across the city, Rikwanto said that security measures would be adjusted according to the situations and conditions at the respective locations. (cor)

Voting requirements

1. Eligible voters — Jakarta ID card holders — must verify whether they are registered on the list of voters announced by the Jakarta Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta). The list can be seen on the poll commission’s official website at kpujakarta.go.id.

2. Each voter will then receive an invitation from a nearby polling station to vote.

3. On polling day, voters are supposed to show their ID cards and an invitation to election officials before casting their vote. Registered voters who have not received an invitation are still eligible to vote by showing their ID cards to officials at the polling station where their names are registered. Election officials will then match the ID with the polling station’s list of names. If the citizen’s name is on the list, he or she will be allowed to vote.

4. After casting their vote, voters are required to dip the little finger of their left or right hand into ink provided by polling officials to prevent voters from voting more than once.

Source: The Jakarta Post