Election Supervisory Committee allows limited re-vote in Sydney for overseas Indonesians who couldn’t vote Saturday

Hundreds of Indonesians lined up in Sydney were reportedly unable to vote after the polls were closed at 6pm. Photo: Change.org
Hundreds of Indonesians lined up in Sydney were reportedly unable to vote after the polls were closed at 6pm. Photo: Change.org

Hundreds of Indonesian citizens living in Sydney who were reportedly unable to vote on Saturday, despite having waited in line to do so, after the local overseas voting committee decided to close the polling station (TPS) at 6pm, leading tens of thousands to sign an online petition demanding a revote to rectify the situation.

Responding to the complaints yesterday, the Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) issued their recommendation, saying that proper procedures had not been followed by the Sydney Overseas Election Committee (PPLN) and that a follow-up vote would need to be carried out for registered voters.

“Bawaslu received information from Sydney’s Panwaslu (Elections Supervisory Committee ) that the closure of the [polling station] was held at 6pm local time, while there were still voters in the queue using their right to vote so those voters could not exercise their right to vote,” Bawaslu Commissioner Fritz Edward Siregar said at a press conference last night as quoted by Detik.

“Bawaslu recommends the following: we order PPLN Sydney through KPU RI (the General Election Commission of Indonesia) to conduct follow-up voting at the TPS for voters who have registered themselves but have not been able to exercise their right to vote,” Fritz added.

In addition to already being registered, Fritz said only those citizens who had already been standing in line at the time the TPS was closed would be eligible to cast their ballots in the follow-up vote.

The pre-registration restriction may severely limit the number of Indonesians in Sydney who can get a chance to vote again as the long lines were supposedly caused by the unexpectedly large number of citizens who had yet to register but still wanted to cast their ballots.

The unexpectedly high voter turnout in many overseas cities with sizable Indonesian diasporas reportedly caused similar issues with extremely long lines and accusations that many were denied their right to vote. Such accusations were made in Hong Kong yesterday after only 27,411 of the city’s 180,000 eligible Indonesian voters were able to cast their ballot, with some claiming to have been unable to vote despite queuing for hours.

In addition to recommending a follow-up vote in Sydney, Bawaslu yesterday also recommended a redo of postal voting for overseas citizens in Malaysia over a scandal involving the finding of tens of thousands of ballots that had already been tampered with in Selangor. The decision would affect 319,293 voters in Kuala Lumpur who used postal voting.

Bawaslu’s decisions will hopefully set a precedent that will see more overseas Indonesians get a second chance to have their voices heard at the ballot box.  

 



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