Sabrina Asril, Jakarta – The Coalition of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) for Electoral Justice has released data on irregularities or violations committed by the state apparatus ahead of the 2024 elections.
The coalition comprises the Setara Institute for Peace and Democracy, Indonesian Human Rights Watch (Imparsial), the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), the Centra Initiative, the Regional Autonomy Monitoring Committee (KPPOD) and Inklusif.
The monitoring was carried during the determination of presidential and vice presidential candidates between November 13, 2023 and January 31, 2024.
In a press statement sent by the Setara Institute Executive Director Halili Hasan, the groups said that there were three forms of violations or irregularities in the 2024 elections, namely neutrality violations, election fraud and professional violations.
The Coalition detailed seven types of violations, namely state civil servant (ASN) support for candidates (38 cases), hidden campaigns (16 cases), support for certain candidates (14 cases) and the politicisation of social aid (8 cases).
Then there was official support for certain contestants (9 cases), the use of state facilities (5 cases) and support of state administrators for certain contestants (2 cases).
Based on the Coalition's records, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo committed violations or irregularities on 11 occasions, and was in fourth place.
The perpetrators of the neutrality violations were regency government state civil servants (13), ministers (13), village chiefs or heads (12), the president (11 cases), the police (9 cases), provincial government state civil servants (8 cases), TNI (Indonesian military) soldiers (7 Cases), regents (4 cases), mayors (4 cases) and sub-district heads (4 cases).
Hasan said that this data shows that the legitimacy of the 2024 elections is actually very fragile.
"We hope that the people continue to monitor the elections so that the elections will not be a turning point for authoritarianism to replace democracy", Hasan told Kompas.com on Friday February 9.
KPPOD Executive Director Armand Suparman said structured, systematic and massive elements had been fulfilled in the various violations that occurred over the last several months.
This aspect was fulfilled because the violations were committed by people who hold power, for example the president who politicised social aid with a huge budget. In addition to this, there were also ministers, regional heads and village level officials.
"The structured aspect was fulfilled. They are the ones who have the authority to regulate the budgets that were allocated, distributed. Where and when, who the targets were. So, systematically there are policies that support, both directly and indirectly, the existence of cheating and this benefited one of the candidate pairs", Suparman Armand said as quoted from Kompas.id.
Meanwhile, the massive aspect in these violations can also be seen from the number of cases that occurred in the community that have already been documented.
The data monitoring used a collection method, namely public reporting through a case tracking platforms (CTP) based on Google Form and Desk Study.
In order to guarantee the validity of monitoring data, the NGO Coalition used triangulation techniques by testing the validity of data through a cross check of three data sources: reporting, review results and data investigation by regional monitoring networks.
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "Catatan Koalisi LSM: Presiden Jokowi 11 Kali Lakukan Pelanggaran Pemilu 2024".]
