TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - KPU Chair Hasyim Asy'ari explains a host of problems during the 2024 elections as well as the ethical violation KPU committed in Gibran’s nomination registration.

The 2024 General Elections were finally over but not without leaving a trail of complaints in their wake. Chaos broke out during voting at home and abroad. In various regions, from West Java to South Papua, voters were reportedly given pre-punched ballot papers to cast their vote.

The maelstrom continued in the recapitulation phase. The General Election Commission (KPU) stopped recording the votes in most subdistricts under the pretext of synchronizing the data in the recapitulation information system (Sirekap) with Form C, which contains the total votes in each polling station. KPU’s vote recording App was fraught with irregularities and errors. As a result, the 2024 elections have been dubbed the worst general elections since the Reformasi.

KPU Chair Hasyim Asy’ari begged to differ, however. He argued that protests always dogged the elections that brought a regime change. “People have the enthusiasm to follow and participate in the elections and be critical,” he said last Thursday, February 22.

It is not just how the elections went. Still, the credibility of the elections was questioned, given the ethical violation committed by Hasyim and KPU members in the nomination registration of President Joko Widodo’s son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, as a vice-presidential candidate. The KPU was subsequently slapped with a stern warning by the Election Organization Ethics Council. Hasyim said Gibran’s nomination still met the requirements without the need to change the KPU regulations.

Hasyim received Tempo reporters for a special interview at his office at the KPU building in Central Jakarta. For over almost three hours, he explained the chaos around the elections, the sanction he received for an ethics violation, and KPU’s bureaucracy that took after that of a military institution. “We want the regions to receive the same message at the headquarters, (delivered via) a line of command (not in the text),” he said.

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Excerpts of the interview:

How do you think the 2024 General Elections went?

First, regarding the logistics. We had 75 days, less time compared with the 2019 General Elections. It was a race against time. Ballot papers had already arrived at our logistics warehouse before December 25. Second, personnel. We looked at their background experiences and sought those who were healthy. They received health insurance, increased honorariums and training for more officials.

How about voting?

(There were issues) overseas. A video circulating on social media said that our nationals in Taiwan received the ballot papers, but there wasn’t voting. The footage only (showed) the opening of the envelope and the ballot paper. I thought it was an old video. But the ballot paper had the photos of the three candidate pairs, meaning it was a new video. I asked for clarification and was told that the papers were sent before Christmas due to the Chinese New Year holiday.

Isn’t polling before the schedule a violation?

It is a violation from the aspect of time. They cast their votes before the official date. Therefore, we classified their votes as damaged.

How do you ensure that the damaged votes were not counted?

We set them aside and there is a special marking to differentiate them.

Polling in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, also went chaotic and people are demanding to recast ballots. What happened?

They used three voting methods: via post, mobile poll booths and poll stations. In Kuala Lumpur, the final voter list (DPT) was finalized in July 2023. Can the list be altered after that? It cannot if the alteration is to eliminate a voter from the list and replace with a new one. Once the person is in the list, nothing can’t be done about it.

There was a video circulating showing children casting votes in Madura, East Java. What did you find?

It was a video from 2019. Another video showed someone wearing a helmet and uniform drilling a stack of ballot papers. That kind of action could not have benefitted any party or candidate. The papers would have holes and be rendered invalid. Another footage from Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) showed ballot papers being soaked in water. It was their way of protecting the leftover papers from being misused. Although their action was not in line with the procedure, that’s okay as long as it is recorded.

The DPT was also messed up, given fictitious identities in the list. What happened?

I don’t know for sure. We checked polling stations on voting day but found no issues. The yardstick is the voter list at the polling places. I can’t confirm if someone who registered using random identity data could enter and find his name there. In essence, that is not the standard used, but the attendance and the data at the polling places.

The General Election Supervisory Agency also found voters with unclear addresses…

I don’t know exactly. Someone who claimed to be an NGO (non-governmental organization) member said there were 54 million voters with anomalous data. We wondered where he could obtain that data as we only gave the data to the political parties. He turned out to be a legislative candidate.

Read the Full Interview in Tempo English Magazine