Gubernatorial candidate and former education minister Anies Baswedan had a busy day on Saturday. First, he joined a mass prayer event at Istiqlal Mosque, organized by Islamist hardliners, at which thousands vowed to only vote for Muslim leaders…
… and later in the day he held his last campaign event in Pancoran, South Jakarta, before the start of the government mandated campaign “quiet period” lasting from Feb 12-14. At the event, Anies asked his supporters to not just go out and vote but to stick around the polling stations afterward in order to monitor other voters for suspicious behavior and signs of voter fraud.
“You look at social media, there’s so much info, it’s even already been in the news, even admitted about the duplicate e-KTP (ID cards). It’s a sign (of voter fraud),” he said as quoted by Detik.
“So on the day of the election, we will monitor and encourage citizens to get involved and keep an eye on (polling places),” he said.
Anies’ reference to duplicate e-KTP could be about one or two related stories being used to whip up paranoia and conspiracy theories about fake foreign voters infiltrating the Jakarta election.
The first is a photo that went viral on social media purporting to show multiple e-KTPs using the same person’s face. No proof of the photo’s authenticity has been found and multiple government agencies have declared it to be a hoax, with threats to persecute those spreading the photo for trying to undermine trust in the election.
The second is a related story about a package filled with fake Jakarta e-KTPs from Cambodia that Indonesian Customs says were intercepted on route to a recipient in Jakarta. Rumors on social media said that thousands of these fake ID cards were discovered but in fact the package only contained 36 e-KTP as well as related tax ID cards (NPWP) and BCA bank accounts. A House investigation into the matter determined it was most likely the cards were being used for some sort of financial crime and were not related to vote fraud.
Senior police officials have also stated that they suspect the fake ID cards could have been engineered by certain parties in an attempt to provoke voters before the election.
The General Election Commission (KPU) has stated that even if fake IDs such as those pictured were to exist, they could not be used to vote in the election. There are safeguards, such as registered voter lists and the use of indelible ink on the fingers of those who have already voted to prevent the same person from voting twice.
Vice Indonesia also has an excellent article on why worries about foreigners voting in the election are unrealistic – including the fact that a foreign voter has never been found to have voted in an Indonesian election.
There’s also a fairly enormous, obvious flaw to this foreign voter conspiracy theory. There are 7.1 million voters registered for the next Jakarta election. That means, to affect the poll numbers by even just 1%, they would have to fly in at least 71,000 foreigners and give them all fake Jakarta IDs (that were registered on the voting list last year). It would be an enormous and incredibly expensive undertaking that would be impossible to cover up.
Despite all this evidence for foreign voter fraud being extremely unlikely, Anies has doubled down on the claim and asking his supporters to monitor the polls. At a campaign event last Tuesday, he also told the crowd that if they saw any people they did not know voting at their polling station to report them to the police.
The way Anies has been making claims about voter fraud based on sketchy social media evidence and asking supporters to monitor polls for vote fraud sounded awfully familiar to us. And, indeed, we found there was another famous politician who made similar statements fairly recently…
“You’ve been reading the same stories as I’ve been reading, so go to your place and vote, and then go pick some other place, and go sit there with your friends and make sure it’s on the up and up,” then Republican candidate for President of the United States Donald Trump told his supporters at a campaign event in October, as quoted by the Washington Post.
“Because you know what? That’s a big, big problem in this country, and nobody wants to talk about it. Nobody has the guts to talk about it. So go and watch these polling places.”
Studies have consistently found that voter fraud is extremely rare in America, and many observers worried that Trump’s words would lead to his supporters intimidating minorities at the polls.
Anies’ words echo not only Trump’s, but also those of Hidayat Nur Wahid, the deputy advisory chairman of The Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), one of the political parties backing his candidacy. At a campaign event on Jan 29, he told supporters, “If some weird individuals come to the polling station, try to greet him in Javanese. It turns out he can’t answer. Maybe he’s Sundanese? He can’t answer either. Try greeting him in Betawi Malay. He doesn’t understand? Maybe he’s Indonesian. Ask him, ‘where are you from?’ [in Bahasa Indonesia]. Turns out he can’t answer too.”
The Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) have also declared that they will be “monitoring” polling places on election day.
“We will support (supervision) so that the passage of the election in Jakarta has will take place in a way that is dignified and without fraud, God willing,” said FPI chairman Ahmad Sobri Lubis as quoted by Jawa Pos National Network. Ahmad added that their poll monitoring was not about intimidation but because it’s what the people want.
It’s not surprising that FPI and Anies are on the same page on this issue. After all, Anies gave a heavily criticized speech to the hardline group back in early January to dispel rumors that he was, among other things, a Liberal Muslim.
It was also in January that Anies saw a huge boost to his poll numbers, going from consistently placing third in last year’s surveys to emerging as the clearest challenger to incumbent Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” in the latest polls, who seems to be maintaining a narrow lead.
Aligning himself with FPI might have been politically beneficial, but Anies, who was once hailed as a progressive leader, might want to be careful. After all, other politicians who have claimed to be for pluralism but have accommodated extremists like FPI have been called out before, such as Gerindra leader Prabowo Subianto (who is also backing Anies’ campaign now).
“Prabowo says he’s on the side of heterogeneity and pluralism in Indonesia. But he actually accommodates and embraces extremist groups like the FPI.”
