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Security alert for eastern regions: Bawaslu
Center stage: A photojournalist takes his position in front of a screen showing an election-related violence index compiled by the Election Monitoring Body (Bawaslu)
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Center stage: A photojournalist takes his position in front of a screen showing an election-related violence index compiled by the Election Monitoring Body (Bawaslu). Bawaslu predicted that five provinces in the country would be prone to outbursts of violence during and after the Dec. 9 local elections.(JP/DON) (Bawaslu). Bawaslu predicted that five provinces in the country would be prone to outbursts of violence during and after the Dec. 9 local elections.(JP/DON)
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span class="inline inline-center">Center stage: A photojournalist takes his position in front of a screen showing an election-related violence index compiled by the Election Monitoring Body (Bawaslu). Bawaslu predicted that five provinces in the country would be prone to outbursts of violence during and after the Dec. 9 local elections.(JP/DON)
Four months ahead of the regional elections, the Elections Monitoring Agency (Bawaslu) has released the 2015 Election Vulnerability Index, which predicts how prone a region is to conflict during elections.
With 308 electoral districts contesting the country's first simultaneous elections, Bawaslu predicts that regions in eastern Indonesia will be the most prone to conflict.
According to the agency's analysis and technical oversight department head Faisal Rahman, three of the top five conflict-prone regions are in the eastern part of the country, comprising Maluku (2.74), East Nusa Tenggara (2.74) and Papua (2.68). Conflict-prone North Sumatra (2.66) and the recently established province of North Kalimantan (2.74) complete the list.
The vulnerability index grades regions participating in the Dec. 5 regional elections based on five main aspects, 16 variables and 30 performance indicators ' reflected on a scale of 0 to 5, with 0'1.0 being 'very safe' and 4.1'5.0 being 'very prone' to conflict.
Faisal said that the five aspects making up the index score comprised the level of organizer professionalism, presence of vote-buying, oversight access, level of public participation and regional security.
The top five conflict-prone regions received an average score of between 2.1 and 3.0 on the national level index, making these regions 'somewhat prone' to conflict, he added.
At the other end of the index, Bangka Belitung island province scored a 'safe' average score of 1.80, followed by Bali with 1.84, South Kalimantan (2.01), Lampung (2.04) and Bengkulu (2.13).
'The target of this index is to encourage every region to have its own [yard stick], to simplify the reading of potential infractions during elections and to provide recommendations for oversight strategies that [are tailored to each region],' Faisal said during the index release in Central Jakarta on Tuesday.
Bawaslu member Nasrullah emphasized the importance of following up on the information that the index provided.
'It is important that there be a follow up to this release ' concrete steps to prepare for conflict that might arise from the regions marked as such,' he said on the sidelines of the event, adding that there would be routine evaluations to chart the development of the predictions on the ground.
Adj. Sr. Commr. Novanto Leiwakabessy of the National Police's intelligence and security unit said that the top five conflict-prone areas listed on the index were not too different from the police's own findings.
Novanto criticized the index for not having enough indicators to determine the security aspect, saying that the police had plenty of data to work on since 2010.
He thus invited Bawaslu to cooperate and engage in information sharing to ensure that the findings were accurate.
Meanwhile, various other analysts and members of civil society have welcomed Bawaslu's initiative despite its limited scope and use of performance indicators.
Syamsuddin Haris, a senior political analyst with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), said on Tuesday that the index should work well as a baseline to prepare for potential conflict, but that it remained to be seen whether it could be used as a valid reference that reflected the reality in the field.
He recommended that future iterations of the index include indicators that considered potential conflict that incumbent candidates posed for elections.
