Camelia Pasandaran & Markus Junianto Sihaloho

The KPU announced last month that it would cut the number of polling stations from 519,000 in April’s legislative elections to 450,000 for the July presidential poll. (Photo: Made Nagi, EPA)

Megawati Campaign Attacks Poll Cutbacks, but KPU Doesn’t Bite

Former President Megawati Sukarnoputri’s campaign team has filed a complaint with the General Elections Commission over its plan to reduce the number of polling stations to be used during the presidential election.

The commission, known as the KPU, announced last month that it would cut the number of polling stations from 519,000 in April’s legislative elections to 450,000 for the July presidential poll.

Speaking at a press conference at the campaign’s media center in Jakarta on Tuesday, Megawati’s campaign secretary general Fadli Zon said that the decision could allow candidates to tamper with the electoral process.

“It would open the door to new kinds of manipulative acts by candidates,” Fadli said, adding that the move also went against the principle that election officials should make it as easy as possible for citizens to vote.

The KPU, Fadli said, also had not made an effort to tell the public about the changes or which polling stations they should go to next month.

“This decision was clearly not meant to improve the quality of the election,” he said. “The KPU says that the number of [registered] voters has increased significantly ­— by about five or six million — so it is ironic that they are cutting the number of polling stations.”

KPU member Syamsul Bahri said on Monday that the commission had registered about 176 million people for the presidential election, compared with 171 million in April.

The body’s chairman, Abdul Hafiz Anshary, said on Tuesday that quotas written into the Presidential Election Law required that the KPU cut the number of polling stations to minimize costs.

“The presidential election is different from the legislative elections in terms of the number of voters allowed in a polling station,” Hafiz said.

Under the law, each presidential polling station should serve 800 voters, while legislative polling stations are meant to be smaller to give voters more time to review the larger ballot.

Hafiz also said that if the number of polling stations was not reduced as the KPU planned, then “people might accuse us of abusing the state budget.”

He added that there was no possibility of changing the commission’s decision regarding the number of polling stations, regardless of what any political parties might say.

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