General Election Commission Chair, Hasyim Asy'ari: I Have to Acknowledge There are Still Problems
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2 March 2024 14:00 WIB
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.
