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Bawaslu seeks greater authority as election fraud cases remain unresolved
New authority would grant agency power to open investigations.
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Vehicles pass in front of the Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) building on Jl. MH Thamrin, Central Jakarta. (The Jakarta Post/Wendra Ajistyatama )
T
he Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) is seeking greater power that would include the authority to open investigations into alleged election fraud amid its limited capacity to crack down on irregularities and violations during the 2019 general election.
The greater power, which would give the agency the authority to investigate the criminal aspects of election fraud and violations, would be included in the revision of Law No. 7/2017 on general elections.
Currently, the law states that the agency can only report such fraud to the Integrated Law Enforcement Team and cannot recommend sanctions to the court.
Bawaslu chairman Abhan said the proposed rule would allow the agency to replace the enforcement team as the sole establishment dealing with all criminal aspects of elections. Therefore, in practice, the agency would employ its own investigators and prosecutors that could recommend sanctions against fraudsters.
He said this policy was required since the law enforcement team, consisting of members of the agency, the National Police and the Attorney General’s Office, had failed to clamp down on the criminal aspects of election fraud because each member of the team had a different opinion on how to rule cases.
As a result, the enforcement team only recommended sanctions to 380 out of 2,152 cases of election fraud to the court, according to its data in November.
“The enforcement team comprises many agencies, so the decision-making process was not effective. We want the election law to be revised to make us as the only agency that handles all criminal aspects of election fraud and violations,” Abhan told reporters on Dec. 5.
