Election supervisory agency suggests photos of corruption ex-con candidates be placed at polling stations

Public scrutiny of election ballots. South Tangerang, Banten, February 2011 Photo: USAID Indonesia / Flickr
Public scrutiny of election ballots. South Tangerang, Banten, February 2011 Photo: USAID Indonesia / Flickr

Indonesia’s Supreme Court struck a stinging blow against efforts to rid Indonesian politics of corruption last week after it chose to strike down a regulation passed by the General Elections Commission (KPU) banning political parties from running candidates who had previously been convicted on corruption charges.

The decision, however, was not that surprising given that the KPU’s regulation was challenged by plenty of other government entities, including the Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu), which argued that the ban was contrary to the 2017 election law that allowed those who had been convicted of corruption (and other serious crimes, even murder) to run as long as they had been jailed for less than five years and announced their crimes to the voting public. The Supreme Court agreed with that reasoning in making their decision.

So, for the time being, corruption ex-cons are legally clear to run in the 2019 elections (and parties have nominated quite a few of them). In the ban’s absence, however, KPU has proposed a new regulation that candidates with legal histories of corruption have their crimes noted on the ballots.

 

Despite fighting the KPU’s ban, Bawaslu has shown their support for that proposal and in fact added another that would require corruption ex-cons to have their photos placed at polling stations to further inform voters.

“Please, for example, let’s put such information on the ballots,” Bawaslu Commission Fritz Edward Siregar said yesterday as quoted by Kompas. “Or, for example, there could be an announcement about candidates that are former corruption convicts, for example there could be a list or photos at the polling station.”

Fritz argued that Bawaslu had always been anti-corruption, despite their opposition to KPU’s ban, and had long discussed measures similar to the photo idea with its sister election oversight body.

It’s not yet clear whether photos in polling stations or information on ballots about corruption ex-cons would be able to pass the kinds of legal challenges KPU’s ban could not, but one would hope that, if such measures were implemented, Indonesian voters would be wise enough to avoid picking such politicians ever again.



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