District Polling Committee officials enter vote counting data into the Tabulation Information System (Sirekap) on Feb 21, 2024, in Palu, Central Sulawesi. - Antara
JAKARTA: The credibility of the General Elections Commission (KPU) is under scrutiny as the projected deadline for announcing the official 2024 election results draws near.
Technical irregularities, which the organisers have struggled to clarify, have raised concerns about the professionalism and transparency of the overall vote tallying process.
Once considered the manifestation of the KPU’s commitment to upholding transparency in the vote counting process, the Tabulation Information System (Sirekap) application has only courted controversy since its deployment in the Feb 14 general election.
Sirekap collates data from uploaded scans of manual vote tabulation forms known as C1.Hasil forms into a digital representation published on the KPU election website, which allows the public to monitor the proceedings up until organisers announce the final tally by March 20.
However, various political parties, volunteer monitors and even legislative candidates awaiting the official returns have flagged what they deem to be proof of inflated vote numbers and other election irregularities.
Among the cases attracting the scrutiny of watchdogs is the suspiciously high bump in election returns for the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), which gained over 230,000 votes in three days based on Sirekap data on Sunday, despite being a minnow party with limited appeal.
This and other cases appeared to have prompted a KPU decision on Tuesday (March 5) to take down the chart displaying the preliminary tabulation data entirely, angering politicians, civil society groups and analysts alike, with some from the latter suggesting that public trust in the poll body has eroded.
The rival camps of presumptive president-elect Prabowo Subianto, for instance, have taken the suspension of a public service as evidence that the KPU has walked back on its commitment to uphold transparency.
“Since early on, we have had our suspicions,” said Ari Yusuf Amir, head of presidential candidate Anies Baswedan’s legal team, on Thursday.
“[The Sirekap] decision has only proven them [to be true].”
Meanwhile, Fadli Ramadhanil, a researcher for the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem), slammed the KPU’s decision to censor its preliminary vote count, calling the decision “misguided”.
“I can’t yet comment on the vote tabulation process, since it is still ongoing. However, there are signs of the KPU’s lack of professionalism, such as their decision to suspend the preliminary vote count,” Fadli told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
Even the Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) has scrutinised the Sirekap debacle, with chairman Rahmat Bagja telling local media that the watchdog had also been left in the dark without any clear explanation from the KPU.
“How long [will the tabulation results be offline]? Why isn’t [the data] precise? There hasn’t been any explanation up until now,” Rahmat said in Jakarta on Wednesday.
KPU commissioner Idham Holik previously told the Post that organisers wanted to allow the public to “obtain more precise information” on election returns.
‘Problematic’ elections Issues with the tabulation process appeared to have surfaced to a much greater degree in the legislative election, with numerous candidates reporting to local Bawaslu offices cases of missing votes and discrepancies between the manual tally done by poll workers and the C1.Hasil forms uploaded to Sirekap.
One candidate from the National Awakening Party (PKB) contesting for a seat in the Lampung Provincial Council (DPRD I), for instance, claimed to have lost 39 votes from a local polling station he helped monitor.
Another legislative candidate, this time from the NasDem Party and vying for a seat in the Jember Regional Council (DPRD II), alleged that 15 of his votes had been “sold” to another candidate from a different party.
Election participants can lodge disputes at the Constitutional Court once the official election returns have been announced, but for now, they must report any findings to Bawaslu or the KPU.
Herzaky Mahendra, a spokesman for the Democratic Party, confirmed with the Post on Thursday that irregularities involving the C1.Hasil forms have become commonplace among monitors tasked by the party with overseeing the vote counting process across the country.
He suggested that the KPU should have done a better job at making sure that polling station administrators uploaded the forms in a timely and reliable manner.
“The C1 form on the Sirekap application is crucial for minimising fraud. We have found evidence that some areas that failed to upload their C1 forms on time had inflated numbers [for certain candidates],” he said.
Herzaky said the party had filed formal complaints even throughout the KPU’s tiered tabulation process, which began at the district and subdistrict levels last week and is now being assessed at the provincial level.
Bawaslu has been looking into several complaints regarding inflated vote tally numbers, including cases in Bogor regency, West Java. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
