TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Seven members of the Kuala Lumpur PPLN are proven to have inflated the number of voters for the 2024 elections. This should open the door to investigating other frauds.

The intentional overstatement of the number of voters by the Kuala Lumpur Overseas Election Committee (PPLN) shows the ramshackle way the 2024 voting was organized. The manipulation of data is only one type of fraud that has been declared legally proven. The Constitutional Court has the opportunity to uncover other types of fraud in the hearing to be held shortly regarding the legal challenge to the general election.

Although proven guilty, those responsible for inflating the numbers have received light punishments. The Central Jakarta District Court sentenced the seven people involved to four months in jail with one-year probation. In the trial, it emerged that the election organizers were influenced by political parties and by people who were trying to engineer the election result.

In the process of drawing up the list of voters in Kuala Lumpur, the political parties intervened and changed the number of voters on the list. Initially, based on the process known as verification and surveying, the total number of voters was only 64,148. After the intervention by outsiders, the committee increased the total to 491,152 voters. Hendra Purnama Iskandar, the Secretary of the Kuala Lumpur PPLN was even believed to have actively lobbied political parties to change the list of voters. Election monitors should thoroughly investigate the facts to uncover more serious electoral crimes.

There have been other indications of electoral fraud overseas. For example, there were presidential ballot papers that had already been punched. In Malaysia, the names of 200,000 people who had the right to vote were not included on the final list of voters. On election day, the number of voters was very high despite the short time the polls were open. Other indications include the fact that many voters still used their old passports in Malaysia, while in Singapore, only 28 percent of the 106,515 voters actually went to the polls.

Electoral fraud in nations like Malaysia is a serious problem. Law enforcement authorities should not stop at the investigation into the seven committee members who have already been charged. The case in Kuala Lumpur should be a consideration for the Constitutional Court justices in revealing other instances of fraud during the 2024 elections.

The falsification of voter data is a serious problem that could be used as a starting point for the Constitutional Court to investigate fraud in other regions. Meanwhile, the organization of voting overseas must no longer be seen as five-yearly routine work. There must be a comprehensive evaluation of the management of voting, including how it is done overseas.

The Constitutional Court has an opportunity to uncover systemic failings in the organization of the 2024 elections in order to preserve the credibility of our elections. Only by doing that, the results of general elections would have strong legitimacy.

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