VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Officials involved in administering the 2019 General Election outlined the challenges and work underway to ensure a transparent election process. General Election Commission (KPU) Chairman Dr. Arief Budiman, Election Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) Commissioner Fritz Edward Siregar and Executive Director of Association for Election and Democracy (Perludem) Titi Anggraini discussed the challenges of staging the world’s largest single-day election during Voice of Indonesia Diplomatic Forum themed Creating Successful Simultaneously Elections at Jusuf Ronodipuro Auditorium, RRI building Jakarta, on Tuesday (29/1). Dr Arief observed that for the first time the 2019 presidential election on April 17 will involve the simultaneous election of five different tiers of government, presidential and vice-presidential, provincial, district/city and sub-district legislative elections, requiring the participation of 7.2 million staff to oversee the election.  While, according to Titi Anggraini one of the biggest challenges facing election organisers is the information gap.

“When voters tend to focus on the presidential election, they don’t know we will receive five ballot papers. They just think that the voting day we will only elect the presidential candidate. Inequality to accessing information is one of our passion. How to reach  the information of the track record of candidates,” said Titi Anggraini.

This problem is exacerbated by legislative candidates refusing to disclose their curriculum vitae to voters. Election Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) Commissioner Fritz Edward Siregar also discussed the problem of hate-speech and hoaxes, outlining that they had learned a lot about how social media had been used to undermine the democratic process in the US and Brazilian elections. (VOI/Stephen/DP)