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ritics have denounced Election Supervisory Committee (Bawaslu) members for failing to understand their basic duties, saying they must get hold of the relevant legislation and read it.

“Bawaslu members do not really understood their authority as stipulated in various laws. They have a lot to learn,” said Veri Junaidi, a researcher with the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) on Wednesday.

Veri was referring to Law No. 15/2011 on election organizers and Law No. 8/2012 on legislative elections, which details the authority of the body.

Under the laws, members of the supervisory body have the authority to settle nearly all types of elections disputes. Elections disputes, according to the Legislative Election Law, are disputes among election participants and disputes between election participants and the General Elections Commission (KPU).

This authority was previously the exclusive preserve of the state administrative courts. The previous supervisory body had no such authority.

The current Bawaslu is the most powerful election supervisory body ever established in the country,
according to Veri.

Bawaslu could solve the problems related to the administrative verification of political parties vying for the 2014 general election without involving the Election Organizers Ethics Council (DKPP).

Last October, 18 of 34 registered political parties were disqualified from contesting the election by the KPU because they failed administrative verification.

However, the commission failed to provide adequate reasons for their disqualification. The disqualified parties then complained to Bawaslu, claiming that their rights had been violated by the commission.

Bawaslu, however, did not view the case as an electoral dispute, but only as an administrative violation. They reported the case to the DKPP, accusing the KPU of ethics code violations.

“Bawaslu failed to understand their authority. It was obvious that the case was an election dispute, not an administrative violation. The body could have solved the disputes without involving the DKPP if only it were aware of its authority,” Veri said.

Following Bawaslu’s report, the ethics council ordered the KPU to throw out the administrative verification of the 18 disqualified political parties and include them for factual verification.

Critics and members of the House of Representatives raged over the council’s ruling because they felt that it had overstepped its authority.

“Now, with all of its power guaranteed by law, Bawaslu is challenged to be more professional and to work more effectively,” Toto Santoso, of the University of Indonesia, said.

Toto considers that the supervisory body has to better understand its authority and needs to scrutinize all alleged violations by the KPU. He said the body needed to prioritize which of the KPU’s alleged violations needed to be dealt with first.

“Bawaslu should solve alleged violations that might disrupt the election. They should not pay attention to technical matters, like political parties’ banners and flags,” he said.

Besides, he also urged all election organizing bodies work in their specifically defined channels as stipulated by laws, meaning that the KPU is the election organizer, Bawaslu as election supervisor and the DKPP the ethics adjudicator. (riz)