Legitimacy of election results comes into question

Dicky Christanto , THE JAKARTA POST , JAKARTA Mon, 04/13/2009 9:21 AM Headlines
The brouhaha surrounding the voter lists and the numerous election violations have sparked protests from losing political parties and civil society groups that could undermine the legitimacy of the polls.Politicians, activists and scholars have pointed their fingers at the General Elections Commission (KPU) and the government, with some even taking legal action against them.
The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) and the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura), which had agreed to form a coalition in parliament and for the upcoming presidential election, have said they would file a lawsuit against the KPU and the government for omitting many eligible voters from the official voter lists.
Activists from the National Amendment Council estimated the figure of eligible but unregistered voters could reach millions, and called on the KPU to organize another round of voting for these voters.
“At least another election should be organized for those eligible voters who were not registered. This is the responsibility of the KPU and the government,” Chalid Muhammad told a press conference Sunday.
He urged these "disenfranchised" voters to take legal action if another election was not forthcoming.
Effendy Ghazali, who also attended Sunday’s press briefing, estimated the number of eligible but unregistered voters could top 10 million people, assuming 20 voters were left out from each of 528,217 polling stations across the country.
The KPU added 23.3 million more eligible voters to its 2009 voter lists for a total of 171.3 million, compared to 140 million in the 2004 elections.
These new additions, however, left many perplexed, as most of them were simply “ghost” voters or redundant names.
“We found names of infants or names of people who had already passed away,” Effendy said.Elections Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) member Bambang Eka Cahya disagreed and slammed the group as biased. He suggested the activists come up with real data, and not make assumptions.
“Don’t just assume things that you don’t know for sure. I agree there were so many mistakes in this election, but to just make assumptions is just not fair,” he said.
Bawaslu, meanwhile, reported on Sunday that cases of ballot mix-ups, where ballots destined for certain regions went to other regions, made up most of the poll irregularities.
“About 159 cases of ballot mix-ups were registered as of 7 p.m. on Saturday; this is the most rampant form of [election] irregularity,” said Bawaslu member Wahidah Suaib.
The National Amendment Council suggested the government replace KPU members for failing to organize the legislative elections well.
“We don’t want to jeopardize the upcoming presidential election by risking incompetent people organizing the election,” Chalid said.
Hadar Gumay from the Center for Electoral Reform (Cetro), however, disagreed, saying that replacing KPU members was just too risky.
“It would be better for us to wait until the whole election process is over. It is too risky to replace them now, even though I agree these people are incompetent,” he said.