The National Commission on Human Rights, or Komnas HAM, announced that it would establish a special team to investigate allegations that the voters list for the April 9 legislative elections was manipulated.

The decision was made after the commission learned that many eligible voters were not registered on the list, Komnas HAM chairman Ifdhal Kasim said during a press conference in Jakarta.

“We will establish a special investigative team to find out how many citizens who actually had the right to vote were excluded from the final voters list, and how that happened,” Ifdhal said.

He said those who were eligible to vote but were not able to due to exclusion from the list could file a report with Komnas HAM.

Ifdhal said the government, along with the General Elections Commission, or KPU, should facilitate and accommodate the citizens’ right to vote.

“Our investigation will focus on what really happen in the field, whether it happened because of an administrative problem or political pressure, or whether the irregularities happened intentionally,” he said.

“The result of our investigation will be handed over to the KPU and the president in the form of recommendations,” Ifdhal said. “If we find the violations to be intentional and in violation of the Criminal Code, we will report them to the police.”

Komnas HAM member Johnie Nelson Simanjuntak said that the investigation was aimed at improving the quality of Indonesia’s democratic processes, especially with the presidential election just around the corner.

He also said that Komnas HAM commissioners were fully aware that some parties may see it as favoring the interests of certain parties.

“It is normal for people to have such perceptions,” Simanjuntak said. “However, everyone must know that Komnas HAM is not involved in politics.”

Ridha Saleh, deputy chairman of Komnas HAM, said that the commission had deployed teams to several election “hot spots,” especially areas with past histories of civil rights violations.

The teams covered border areas, including Nunukan and Entikong in Kalimantan, Tawau in Sulawesi and Atambua in East Nusa Tenggara Province, and conflict areas such as Aceh, Papua, Maluku and Poso in Central Sulawesi Province.

“We found that most of the violations involved irregularities with the voters list, and the failure of poll officials to serve the voters properly,” Ridha said.

He also said that election officials came up short in encouraging people to participate in the polls.

The team deployed by Komnas HAM reported that only 120 citizens cast their votes at eight polling stations in Tawau, where more than 8,000 people were registered to vote. In Sabah, Malaysia, where 160,000 Indonesians work on plantations, only 9,500 people were registered as absentee voters, he said.

“This might be due to poor education efforts by election officials or bad management of the registration process,” Ridha said. “In essence, this could also have been a violation of the right of the people to vote.”

Date: 14 April 2009

Source: The Jakarta Globe