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Election fraud: Will the House exercise its right of inquiry?
It is apt that PDI-P presidential candidate Ganjar raised the call for a legislative inquiry into alleged fraud during the 2024 general election, as that party possesses the qualities necessary to form an opposition and oversee the process.
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One spirit, one voice: Protestors perform Friday prayers on March 1, 2024 outside the House of Representatives in Jakarta. Afterward, they held a rally to voice their support for a House inquiry into alleged election fraud and to call on the government to lower staple food prices. (Antara/Aditya Pradana Putra)
The call from presidential candidate Ganjar Pranowo for the House of Representatives to open an inquiry into allegations election fraud carries two fundamental goals.
The first is to respond to irregular events and political maneuvers involving the President and his aides that allegedly influenced voters’ support and political psychology in the lead-up to the election on Feb. 14.
The Jakarta Post has published several articles describing this impact. Its Feb. 9 editorial “Be transparent about ‘bansos’” and the Feb. 12 article titled “Cash aid transfer in limbo after Bansos controversy” exposed the 2024 election as a personal affair of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo because his eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, was running for vice president alongside Prabowo Subianto.
In this context, President Jokowi, as well as some of his ministers, showed no statesmanship as they conducted a “covert campaign” through the distribution of social assistance (Bansos) in Central Java and East Java, two strongholds of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) that nominated Ganjar.
The social aid program raised many eyebrows because it did not involve the Social Affairs Ministry in either formulating its policies or distributing the aid. In short, the program lacked transparency.
Second, the Post article “Academics report political intimacy” (Feb. 9, 2024) reports on the mobilization of the state apparatus, specifically the police. Of course, the move received sharp criticism and resistance, including from academics.
Strangely, the scholars became the target of intimidation by the police, who wanted them to talk nice about the government ahead of election day.
