TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The General Election Commission's (KPU) success in conducting the relatively smooth Presidential Election is praiseworthy. However, the commission is now facing the last test: vote counting.
In the meantime, the public is still eagerly waiting for the winner of election: is it Prabowo Subianto-Hatta Rajasapair or Joko Widodo-Jusuf Kalla pair?
In doing the vote counting, the Commission is expected to work smartly and free from any pressures from any parties. The expectation is understandable because the Commission now seems less confident.
With the vote counting process underway, KPU Chairman Kamil Manik said that the final decision of the election result will not be determined by KPU but by the Constitutional Court instead. As a KPU chairman, he should not have said that.
Husni’s statement raised the speculation that the result of the election would be so much in a mess that it has to be brought to the Constitutional Court.
In fact, it is the duty of the commission to count the votes accurately so that both parties could accept the result of the election although it a common knowledge that vote counting process for this presidential election is a daunting task due to the less than 5 percent of margin of votes between the two pairs.
However, both candidates and the public would be willing to accept any results if from the beginning KPU has shown its ways of working transparently.
The transparency here could actually be manifested by conducting temporary vote counting and make it public on a daily basis. This way was once done to ease the people’s curiosity and suspicions. Besides, the commission has collected the scanned C1 forms, which contain vote counting results in all polling stations.
If the public can conduct the temporary vote counting as provided at kawalpemilu.org, KPU should have been able to do it as well. With the permanent vote counting gradually made public, the people will certainly a little more calmed.
Indeed, it is the role to ease the tension that should have been played by KPU Chairman.
Unfortunately, the Commission has not been able to become a good jury in the middle of a veracious competition between Prabowo camps and Jokowo camps since the campaign periods until today.
The campaigns should have been arenas for both candidates to show their programs and to also to reveal track records of both candidates. In fact, it turned out to become an dirty war of spreading propaganda.
Even after the voting was done, the public had to deal with polemics about the results of several quick counts. Several politicians even questioned the result of quick counts done by several credible pollsters, including by state-run broadcaster Radio Republic Indonesia (RRI).
Quick count does play a very important role as a benchmark to the official result of vote counting and also to prevent irregularities. However, if the quick count done by RRI is still underestimated, people will then raise their eyebrows and may suspect of irregularities of the election results.
KPU must prove that the suspicions are unfounded.
The Commission can start by counting the votes carefully. KPU Commissioners should also be optimistic the result of the vote counting will be accepted by both camps and the case does not have to be brought to the Constitutional Court.
(*)
