C

ritics have lambasted the General Elections Commission (KPU) and the Elections Supervisory Committee (Bawaslu) for unnecessary spending on the evaluation of general elections in 30 overseas cities.

Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) executive director Titi Anggraini said on Tuesday that the overseas trips were extremely unwise given that the House of Representatives was currently mulling the scrapping of direct elections due to their cost.

'€œThey don'€™t seem to know about priorities,'€ she told The Jakarta Post.

'€œBoth the KPU and Bawaslu are not sensitive to the current situation, where the public is fighting to build the argument that direct elections can be conducted effectively and efficiently.'€

Titi said that the evaluations were suspect from the planning stage.

'€œThe evaluation method was designed by themselves and did not include participation by outsiders,'€ she said.

Moreover, Titi said the number of people who went on overseas trips was more than required for evaluation. '€œThree Bawaslu commissioners visited London with a relatively big team of seven staff members,'€ she said.

'€œNot to mention that they also visited places outside their scheduled visits such as the Arsenal and Chelsea soccer clubs,'€ Titi added.

People'€™s Voters Education Network (JPPR) researcher Yusfitriadi said the evaluation seemed merely to be a ruse for the KPU and the Bawaslu members to get paid while travelling. '€œThis evaluation looks like a vacation. It cannot be tolerated,'€ he said.

Yusfitriadi said it was unnecessary for KPU and Bawaslu officials to be physically present in order to evaluate elections in overseas countries, saying that they could have easily utilized technology.

Moreover, the KPU and Bawaslu should have been more cautious in deciding which countries needed to be visited in order to evaluate the elections there, he added.

Commenting on the criticism, KPU secretary-general Arif Rahman Hakim said evaluation was the commission'€™s duty. '€œMonitoring aspects are mandated by the law,'€ he said.

Arif also insisted that the evaluation process had been conducted in accordance with the existing regulations and that the results would be open to examination.

'€œAfter the evaluation, we will make recommendations and reports to improve the funding and the technical aspects of the next elections,'€ he said, adding that the expenditure for the evaluations was approved by the House last year.

He declined to reveal the cost, saying that he did not remember the exact figure and that it would be better to ask the KPU'€™s planning bureau. The bureau also declined to reveal the figure as the evaluation had not been completed.

So far, three out of seven KPU commissioners have been on overseas evaluation trips, according to KPU commissioner Arief Budiman.

The three commissioners are Sigit Pamungkas, who went to Brazil, Ferry Kurnia Rizkiyansyah, who went to Frankfurt, and KPU chairman Husni Kamil Manik, who went to China.

'€œI will go to Australia, Pak Juri Ardiantoro will go to Tokyo and Pak Hadar Nafis Gumay will go to Kuala Lumpur,'€ Arief said.