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Gorontalo election supervisor struggles to control netizens in cooling-off period
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A representative of a gubernatorial candidate pair checks ballots at the Gorontalo General Elections Commission on Oct. 25. Gorontalo is one of 101 regions across Indonesia scheduled to hold simultaneous elections in 2017. (Antara/Adiwinata Solihin)
T
he Gorontalo Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) after having removed all campaign paraphernalia by Feb. 12 at 12 a.m. has admitted to facing difficulties in preventing netizens from campaigning through social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook.
In a Facebook group called Gorontalo Satu, which has almost 14,000 members, several personal accounts were still submitting campaign posts for candidates No. 1 and No. 3: Hanah Hasanah Fadel-Tony Yunus and Zainuddin Hasan-Adhan Dambea.
Another group, called Portal Gorontalo, with more than 188,000 members, had some posts with images campaigning against a particular candidate pair.
(Read also: Jakarta election battle goes on as netizens ignore cooling-off period)
Bawaslu Gorontalo head, Siti Haslina Said, said her agency was having a hard time ensuring that social media adhered to the rules of the cooling-off period from Feb. 12 to Feb. 14. “We cannot do much about this, especially to those campaigning using personal accounts,” she said Monday.
The offline world, however, was easier to manage. As of Monday morning, Bawaslu Gorontalo, in cooperation with the police and the Transportation Agency, had taken down about 80 percent of campaign paraphernalia from the streets throughout Gorontalo province.
“At 12 a.m. on Sunday, the Election Supervisory Committee [Panwaslu] in each of the six regencies and municipality began taking down the paraphernalia,” Haslina said.
The officers also visited bus terminals and asked drivers to peel off campaign stickers. (evi)
