August 8, 2024

Bawaslu: Prioritize Prevention in Election Supervision

The General Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) said that it had handled 70 alleged violations, 126 alleged violations of internet content, and carried out 90,716 preventions related to the 2024 election. Efforts to prioritize prevention will continue to be carried out by Bawaslu in monitoring the election.

“From January to December 2023, Bawaslu has carried out 22,608 (25%) identification of vulnerabilities, 2,271 (3%) education, 2,706 (3%) community participation, 3,824 (4%) cooperation, 20,501 (23%) prevention letters, 7,577 (8%) publications, and 3,229 (34%) innovations in other activities,” said Lolly Suhenty, Coordinator of the Prevention, Community Participation, and Public Relations Division of Bawaslu RI at the Bawaslu Office, Central Jakarta, (19/12).

Lolly explained that through cyber surveillance, searches with Intelligent Media Monitoring (IMM), and public complaints, Bawaslu found 126 alleged internet content violations related to the election. A total of 124 pieces of content related to hate speech, 1 piece of hoax content, 1 piece of content politicizing ethnicity, religion, race, and intergroup (SARA), and 8 pieces of content targeting election organizers.

“The distribution of platforms is as follows: Facebook has 52 content, Instagram 38, X (Twitter) 32, TikTok 3, and YouTube 1 content,” explained Lolly.

In this regard, Bawaslu has submitted requests for content access restrictions three times to the Directorate General of Information Applications of the Ministry of Communication and Information (Kominfo) and coordinated with social media platforms. Lolly also said that, through collaboration with Bawaslu, all social media platforms already have special channels for the 2024 election.

Meanwhile, Puadi, Coordinator of Bawaslu’s Violation and Data and Information Handling Division, said that during the campaign period, Bawaslu had handled 70 cases of alleged campaign violations, consisting of 35 cases at the central level and 35 at the regional level. The report and findings include violations of the administration and neutrality of the State Civil Apparatus (ASN).

“Of the 70 cases handled, 26 cases were registered (37%), 40 reports were not registered (57%), and 4 cases were still in the process of initial review and improvement (6%),” explained Puadi.