Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed a new regional elections bill (RUU Pilkada) which introduced new regulations that many believe were clearly aimed at keeping Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama from being able to run as an independent candidate in 2017.
The new bill requires that the government personally verify the IDs of every voters who submitted their identity cards (KTP) in support of independent candidates. The law only provides two mechanisms through which this can be done: personal visits by a government official to each voter’s home address or, failing that, a visit from the voter to the offices of their local Voting Commission (PPS), all within a 14-day time frame.
Considering Teman Ahok has collected nearly one million KTPs in support of Ahok’s independent run, the logistical challenges this verification process pose are obvious. As Teman Ahok previously noted, this law would discriminate against people who work (and thus could not be visited at their home address) and who could not take off to go to the PPS office.
Nonetheless, Teman Ahok is hardly ready to accept defeat. In addition to challenging the new law in the Supreme Court, they are already planning a “cuti sehari” (day off) campaign to help Ahok’s supporters get their IDs verified, an idea that was first proposed by several people on social media.
Teman Ahok volunteer I Gusti Putu Artha, said the group is preparing the technical plans for the campaign.
“The ‘day off’ proposal is not from us, but we will try to facilitate it,” Putu told Tempo on Sunday.
Putu said the plan would be for people to take the day off in stages according to their respective areas of support. Supporters would be asked to gather at their neighborhoods’ PPS office on an appointed day in August 2016.
Putu said the campaign was aimed at minimizing the number of supporters whose KTPs would be invalidated by making it as easy as possible for them all to be processed quickly at their PPS office.
The Chairman of the Jakarta Election Commission, Sumarno, said the proposal did not violate any regulations, although he noted that they were still waiting on the specific rules from the Regional Leadership Council regarding the verification procedures.
The factual verification process is scheduled take place from August 21 until September 3. Hopefully Teman Ahok will be able to convince the Supreme Court to overturn this undemocratic new law, but we have hope that the resourceful organization will be able to figure out how to win the game, even with the deck stacked against them.
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