Amid all the news stories about government misadministration leading to foreigners being registered in the voter database for April’s presidential and legislative elections, one firebrand cleric is stoking the flames of conspiracy of election fraud by incumbent President Joko Widodo’s government all the way from Saudi Arabia.
That firebrand cleric is, of course, Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) founder Rizieq Shihab, who is backing Jokowi’s challenger Prabowo Subianto in the election. Through one of his representatives in the FPI, Rizieq called on Indonesia’s Muslims to ensure that their voting rights aren’t stolen by foreigners.
“Habib Rizieq is urging the Muslim people to make sure that they are registered in the DPT (permanent voter database). Don’t let their NIK (ID card numbers) in the DPT be used by foreigners,” FPI Secretary General Munarman told CNN Indonesia yesterday.
Munarman also conveyed Rizieq’s call to Muslims to closely monitor voting stations on the day of voting to ensure that nobody without the right to vote takes part in the election, as well as guarding the vote tallying process to prevent fraud by officials.
Rizieq is currently still in Saudi Arabia, where he has spent more than a year hiding from Indonesian law enforcement. Although police dropped his suspect status in the infamous pornography case that first led him to flee the country, the FPI leader still has numerous legal cases at various stages pending against him including charges of blasphemy against Christianity and state symbols.
Many thought that President Joko Widodo’s choice of Ma’ruf Amin, the head of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) and the person who signed the blasphemy fatwa against former Jakarta Governor Basuki “BTP” Tjahaja Purnama, would make voter mobilization via Islamic hardliners an unviable strategy for Prabowo. While that remains to be seen, obviously Prabowo believes it’s still worth cozying up to these groups.
In fact, Prabowo and Rizieq appear to have become even closer allies in the lead up to the election, with the Gerindra chairman visiting the firebrand cleric in Saudi last year as well as promising recently that he would personally bring home Rizieq from Saudi Arabia in his private plane if he were to be elected president.
Foreign intervention?
Recently, conspiracy theories about foreigners being mobilized to vote in favor of President Jokowi in April’s election have gathered steam due to several official findings of foreigners entering the DPT due to what officials claim to be administrative error.
Reports of foreigners entering the DPT have surfaced with increasing regularity recently, most notably election supervisory officials in Bali finding 59 foreigners in the DPT yesterday, 33 of whom have been removed. The next biggest find so far was in Central Java, which saw 10 foreigners removed from the DPT this week.
Indonesians are going to the voting booths in just over a month on April 17, the first election in history to combine both the presidential and legislative elections.
