Those who distrust the commission have done everything they can to portray it as an institution with a deficit of trust, despite that all seven of its members had to undergo a long selection process before eventually being elected by the House of Representatives. Smear campaigns against the KPU are on the rise as tensions prevail among supporters of the two presidential tickets competing in the election.

Attempts to discredit the KPU vary in scope, ranging from the spread of an unsubstantiated report about the finding of seven containers loaded with 1 million ballots cast for the incumbent President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and his running mate Ma’ruf Amin, to suspicions that the KPU is an arm of the government that seeks to ensure Jokowi’s reelection.

The report about the punched ballots was proven to be a hoax and the police arrested five people for their role in creating and circulating the fake news.

In yet another display of distrust in the KPU, the hashtag #INAElectionObserverSOS has gone viral on social media — the hashtag was once one of the top trending topics worldwide on Twitter. Such developments suggest that international observers must save Indonesia from election fraud.

However, the KPU has already invited observers from 33 foreign countries and 11 international organizations to monitor the course of balloting in polling stations across the country. Since 2004, the commission has allowed international observers to monitor Indonesia’s general and regional elections to make sure the international community perceives them as legitimate. The presence of international observers is a logical consequence of the country’s decision to embrace democracy.

Indonesia has since 1999 held four democratic elections, plus thousands of regional elections, which in general were run in a fair manner. Of course, there were several cases of vote rigging, vote buying and other violations of the Elections Law, but they were too insignificant to render the elections illegitimate. Those offenders have been convicted and sentenced in accordance with the law.

There should be no doubt about the KPU’s ability to maintain impartiality this time around. The poll commission comes under the close watch of the Elections Supervisory Body (Bawaslu), an ethics council and a public that has voiced trust in the KPU, as indicated in recent surveys.

There is no room for the KPU to meddle in the election process or rig the vote in favor of a certain party. To make sure that the KPU is not complicit in fraud and that democracy wins on April 17, civil society organizations and groups have developed apps and set up websites, such as kawalpemilu.org.

All the noise intended to delegitimize the KPU would therefore only endanger democracy.