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Jakarta Post

Ahead of regional elections, it feels like Nargis

It seems more than 106 million Indonesians are urged to prioritize their right to vote over their right to life and health despite appeals to delay the local elections, at least until the coronavirus is more controllable according to World Health Organization (WHO) standards, or when the WHO has pronounced an available vaccine as being safe.

Ati Nurbaiti (The Jakarta Post)
South Tangerang, Banten
Wed, December 9, 2020

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Ahead of regional elections, it feels like Nargis Workers from the Depok General Elections Commission (KPU) stack ballot boxes at a warehouse in Cimanggis district, Depok, West Java, on Nov. 25. The Depok KPU has started distributing supplies throughout the city in preparation for the 2020 regional elections on Dec 9. JP/P.J.Leo (JP/P.J. Leo)

 

In May 2008, as a journalist with The Jakarta Post, I was in Bangkok, having failed to cross into Myanmar with an Indonesian government team delivering emergency supplies to areas hit hard by Cyclone Nargis. The government’s plane itself was having difficulty getting clearance to fly, let alone foreign journalists.

At the time I thought I was witnessing what seemed to be a barbaric regime up close. As around 1 million residents fled to whatever safe ground there was,  with their homes and crops entirely ravaged, they were still made to form miserable queues to vote in a referendum on a proposed constitution.

Out of all awful reports that had come out of Myanmar it was this that made me speechless. Aid had not even reached many of the disaster victims.  What was the military doing? Kindly guarding citizens to ensure their right to vote even as they had no food, no shelter? Never under the authoritarian New Order had we experienced anything like this. 

But now — déjà vu.

It seems more than 106 million Indonesians are urged to prioritize their right to vote over their right to life and health despite appeals to delay the local elections, at least until the coronavirus is more controllable according to World Health Organization (WHO) standards, or when the WHO has pronounced an available vaccine as being safe.

The Indonesian Medical Association (IDI) was among those appealing to delay the polls while more and more doctors and nurses died — the latest official death toll reported Saturday was 192 doctors, 14 dentists and 136 nurses, among more than 17,000 deaths nationwide owing to COVID-19.

However, the government and lawmakers have ruled that the elections can no longer be delayed. I was shocked when aspiring pairs for the mayoral post in my area, South Tangerang — now among many “red zones” — registered their candidacy with their supporting crowds, like others elsewhere. When noted lawyers asked me to join a citizen lawsuit to urge that the elections be postponed, I spontaneously joined though we have little chance of winning.

Though it’s a lone group of five plaintiffs, one is Busyro Muqoddas of Muhammadiyah, which represents some 30 million Muslims among organizations appealing to delay the elections along with Nahdlatul Ulama, the country’s biggest Islamic organization.

“We hope the judges show independence of the executive and legislative branches and make a breakthrough” to stop the election proceedings, Nurkholis Hidayat of the Lokataru Law and Human Rights Office told an online press conference after the trial last Thursday.

The next hearing is Dec. 10, the Jakarta State Administrative Court said — a day after the elections. But a court ruling to delay the further phases, mainly local to national recapitulation of votes, might just save the health and even lives of tens of thousands of volunteers in our communities who have signed up as members of almost 300,000 polling station teams. Lawmakers have ruled out plans of electronic vote counting, which might be safer during the epidemic.

Sure, my neighborhood has managed to come up with a team of all under 50-years-old in line with COVID-19 election rules. But one young man changed his mind almost at the last minute, while other teams elsewhere have members reportedly resisting the mandatory testing for the virus, and it remains unclear whether all teams have enough substitutes in the event just one member tests positive.

The health protocols for voters look safe enough — come to the polling station only at the allotted time on your invitation, use the provided disposable gloves and other precautionary methods, vote and immediately head home. No time for the usual happy neighborhood reunions, which mark every election.

But how come we are virtually sacrificing a significant part of our productive generation, especially those brave volunteers on the local election teams?

The refusal to merely postpone the elections for 270 regions led a fellow plaintiff in the above lawsuit to conclude that only “lust for rotating power” can explain the persistence to go ahead with the polls.

“Resources and concentration to deal with COVID-19 will be further strained while people have already had their right to livelihoods undermined” under restrictions, lay-offs and decreasing households’ ability to cope, said the director of Jurnal Perempuan (Women’s Journal), Atnike Sigiro.

In a television discussion last week, noted epidemiologist Pandu Riono put his foot down on plans of the General Elections Commission (KPU) to “coordinate” with local pandemic task forces on whether they could facilitate voters who were COVID-19 patients!!

“No one can enter the special wards” for the patients except assigned medical workers, he said, adding the ban should come from the top with no room for discussion at the local level.

The KPU official and lawmaker in the debate said they would surely “consider” the input — despite inconsistent health protocols, even among officials.  Authorities are being stricter only after massive crowds greeted popular cleric Rizieq Shihab, who almost immediately met Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan, now recovering from the coronavirus infection, and who blithely held a wedding reception for his daughter, instead of isolating after his trip home from Saudi Arabia. So sorry for our inability to control the crowd despite our precautions, he said later.

As we’re facing an invisible cyclone, the government should show much better effort and intention to protect citizens.

I may have to go the polling station to safeguard my ballot, regardless of how I vote — while praying that our volunteers are not like lambs dragged to the slaughter.

 ***

The writer is a freelance journalist.

 

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