TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsNew poll rules needed for hospital patients
Experts say the General Elections Commission (KPU) must make new poll rules that ensure all hospital patients who are eligible to vote are able to cast their ballots
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
E
xperts say the General Elections Commission (KPU) must make new poll rules that ensure all hospital patients who are eligible to vote are able to cast their ballots.
National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) commissioner Siti Noor Laila said on Monday that KPU regulations were not effective in facilitating many electors who were not able to get to a polling place.
It was stipulated that, for instance, hospital patients wishing to cast their votes had to first obtain A5 forms provided for voters who want to cast ballots outside their constituencies.
Siti said it was difficult for patients undergoing in-patient treatment in a hospital to arrange for their A5 forms.
'The KPU must create new poll rules that are more accommodative of hospital patients. Special polling stations must be available in hospitals to accommodate patients who are registered in the final voter list but cannot get to a polling station,' the commissioner said.
In its monitoring in Yogyakarta, Komnas HAM found 401 patients in Dr Sardjito Hospital, Yogyakarta, who could not cast their ballots.
Almost all patients undergoing in-patient treatment in hospitals in Yogyakarta could not cast their votes, hampered by inflexible poll rules.
'Of a total of 269 patients who had the right to vote in our in-patient facilities, only two could cast their ballots,' Nur Sukowati, a public relations officer from Bethesda Hospital in Yogyakarta, told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
In Panti Rapih Hospital, only seven patients and three family members could cast their votes.
Rita Kristiari, the hospital's public relations officer, could not give the exact number of patients eligible to vote who were not able to cast their ballots but it could be in the hundreds because Panti Rapih Hospital has 375 beds and they were all full.
'The KPU must immediately draft new rules that ensure no citizens lose their right to vote in the upcoming presidential election and other elections in the future,' said Mada Sukmajati, a political expert from the University of Gadjah Mada. (ebf)
