Rumah Pemilu Indonesia Election Portal
The Initial phase of the 2019 National Elections has practically begun when the Elections Commission (KPU) officially started the political party registration process on Tuesday (10/03). KPU will refer to the KPU Regulations No. 11/2007 on Registration, Verification, and Approval of Participant Party in Elections as the legal basis for this registration process. KPU uses Political Party Information System (Sipol) to facilitate political party and election management body (EMB) to conduct registration, administrative works, and verification process.
The use of Sipol has caused quite a controversy because it is mandatory by regulation. Every political party is required to fulfill the form in Sipol completely before they are allowed to register. The Election Monitoring Body (Bawaslu) is particularly disincline with this regulation. According to Bawaslu, KPU should provide an alternative mechanism for when political party is unable to fulfill the form in Sipol.
Rumah Pemilu spoke with Fadli Ramadhanil, a researcher from the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem), on the legality of Sipol and its potential harms. Here is our conservation at Perludem’s Office in Tebet, Jakarta (10/06).
What is your opinion on the regulation that mandates political parties to use Sipol?
Sipol is basically a part of KPU’s initiative to make political party management more organized and easily verifiable.
However, KPU makes the use of Sipol mandatory. And there is no legal basis for this mandate in the Elections Law…
There is nothing wrong in making it mandatory. KPU has the authority to make their own election management regulations. As long as they are not conflicting with other regulations, it is basically fine.
Bawaslu says KPU should provide an alternative mechanism for when political party is unable to fulfill the form in Sipol. What do you think of this?
The protocol (for Sipol) is not detailed and comprehensive enough. For example, if the system encountered a problem, what should political party do? If a party submitted an overdue form, can they just submit it to the KPU Office in their regency/municipality? These kind of things need to be specified.
What is the consequence of this lack of detail?
There might be problems ahead if KPU does not specify the regulation. The fact that this regulation does not have legal basis in the Elections Law might cause some people to protest.
Bawaslu has expressed their complaint because KPU has not give them access to Sipol. However, KPU says they have already give access to Bawaslu since Thursday (10/05)…
KPU wouldn’t give access to Bawaslu without any official letter of request.
Does KPU need a legal basis to provide the access?
They should be. But this could be resolved with good communication. Other than filing an official request from Bawaslu, KPU should also officially told Bawaslu that currently Sipol is being used for data input, and they will provide the access immediately.
Bawaslu needs to make new Bawaslu Regulations to monitor Sipol. Can Bawaslu just monitor Sipol without Bawaslu Regulations?
Bawaslu is allowed to do that by the Elections Law.
