Rumah Pemilu Indonesia Election Portal
The Chairman of the Election Commission (KPU), Arief Budiman, says that he and his team are striving to fulfill the hopes and aspirations of the Indonesian public for professional and neutral local KPU members. In order to achieve that, Arief is planning to impose stricter regulations on local KPUs recruitment mechanism and process.
According to Arief, it is necessary for election management body, like KPU, to fully understand every aspect of election management process, including election system, technical knowledge, transparency, and the working flow. Furthermore, KPU should also prioritize candidates who have produced any intellectual work, like books, on elections.
“Being a KPU member is not an easy task. We will publish all the candidates’ profile and professional background so that the public can assess for themselves the quality of the candidates,” says Arief in Jakarta (05/29).
Local Experts in the Selection Committee
In recruiting members for provincial KPU, the central KPU need to assemble a selection committee consisted of a combination of members of the central KPU and election experts from the local area, so that the selected candidates will be the person who really understand the local specific problems and characteristics in order to minimize the probability of social conflict.
“The delegates from the central KPU may come from any area, but the rest of the selection committee member should be from the local area itself. We expect the selected candidates will be the one that fully understand every technical aspect of the election process,” says Arief.
Different Value for Different Aspect
Arief says that KPU will consider many aspects in selecting the new members for local KPUs. And they will apply different value for different aspect of the selection.
“For example, we will put a higher value degree for candidate’s knowledge on election management than on election system. So, we will not disqualify a candidate only because he was weak on a certain aspect,” Arief says.
Arief also says that he and his team will put a special emphasis on psychological and personality test. KPU wants the selected candidates will be able to work on a team to achieve a shared goal.
Recruitment of KPU Members at Regency/Municipality Level
Central KPU put a special attention on the selection process of the new members for KPU at regency/municipality level because, in many cases, electoral violations were committed by the members of KPU at this level. Actually, it is the authority of the provincial KPU to recruit new members for the regency/municipal KPU, however, this time around the central KPU wants to make sure that the selected members will have the necessary quality and integrity.
In the draft for the revision of the Elections Law, it is stated that the selection process of the new members of regency/municipal KPU is conducted by central KPU. Arief appreciates this new regulation because it will be easier for central KPU to control the selection process.
“The new regulation will make it easier for us to control the recruitment process. In the previous regulation, the recruitment process is authorized by provincial KPU. Admittedly, the selection process for regency/municipality KPU will take a lot of our time. We need to manage our time wisely,” says Arief.
