Luhur Hertanto, Jakarta – The Center for Electoral Reform (Cetro) is to lodge a complaint with the Constitutional Court over intervention by the Aceh Emergency Military Command (PDMD) into political parties and the National Election Commission (KPU) in the Aceh general elections.
Cetro said that these practices show that the PDMD went far beyond its authority as the body responsible for ensuring security during the elections. “They were involved in the organisation [of the elections], while in fact the KPU gave no such mandate [to the military]”, said Cetro’s executive director Smita Notosusanto on Tuesday April 27.
Cetro’s joint monitoring team, Aceh Election Watch, the Aceh Working Group and Indonesia Human Rights Watch (Imparsial) have found a number of ways in which the PDMD intervened in the 2004 general elections such as prohibiting the political parties from conduction socialisation on voting procedures on the grounds that many [people would then know how to] damage ballot papers [to invalidate their vote]. If they did this, the head of the political party in question would be accused of being a member of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and attempting to thwart the elections.
Intervention in the KPU included determining whether or not a person was able to become a candidate legislative member. In addition to this, the PDMD also determined the location of polling stations and only informed the KPU of their location two days before the vote. “As result there were polling stations setup in places where they should not have been, such as places of worship and military posts”, added Notosusanto.
Other forms of intervention including placing armed personal at polling stations including behind voting booths so that the military personal concerned could see who voters selected. This automatically wiped out the principle of voter confidentiality.
“Even the Election Monitoring Committee must be prohibited from entering a polling station”, added Election Monitoring Committee member Topo Santoso. The Election Monitoring Committee also reported that there were indications of intimidation by the PDMD against Acehnese people such as mobilising people to go to polling stations by threatening them.
Furthermore, the PDMD specifically formed militia groups on the pretext of maintaining security, such as Public Security Officers (Linmas), the Anti-Separatist Front (BAS) and the GAM Separatist Resistance Front (FPSG). The selection of militia members was carried out forcibly by military personnel.
On the day before the elections, they surrounded people’s hoses with aim being to intimidate them into voting the next day, even including people who were sick and bed-ridden. “People who did not get their fingers marked with ink [to show that they had cast a vote] the next day had a big problem’, explained Notosusanto as she displayed photographs of people being mobilised by the military.
Because of the actions by the PDMD, it is not surprising that the percentage of Acehnese citizens who cast votes was quite high, that is as high as 84 per cent. “But that also abrogated the right of voters not to vote”, she continued.
As is known, the figure of 84 per cent is itself far lower than the figure claimed by army chief of staff General Ryamizard Ryacudu who has stated that the percentage of Acehnese who cast votes was as high as 94 per cent. With regard to this discrepancy, Notosusanto criticised the PDMD’s data which was quoted by Ryacudu as being inaccurate. (ani)
[Translated by James Balowski.]
