Khairul Fahmi: We Must Evaluate the Registration Procedure for Political Parties

The political party registration process receives evaluations from many elections experts and activists. On eof the experts who provide his evaluation is Khairul Fahmi, a researcher from the Center for Constitution Study (Pusako) of Andalas University.

Here is the transcript of interview between Khairul and Rumah Pemilu.

In the Elections Law No.7/2017, it is mentioned that there are four stages of political party registration process: application, administrative assessment, factual verification, and final result. Do you think these stages should be conducted in succession or each of its stage can be conducted separately from the others?

Those stages can be conducted separately. However, some people interpret it as successive stages, where a political party must submit all of the required documents in the application stage first before KPU conducts administrative assessment.

On the other hand, many members of political parties argue that KPU will not be able to assess the validity of all submitted documents within the registration period. So, it will be best for parties to apply for registration first, and KPU can assess the validity of the registration application after conducting administrative and factual verification.

Which one do you think is more valid?

I think the only successive stages in the whole process are between stage 2 (administrative assessment) and stage 3 (factual verification). It only makes sense. KPU does not have to conduct factual verification for a party if the party’s administrative documents have already been considered invalid.

However, it would be too soon for KPU to decide whether a party’s registration application is valid or not only at the application stage.

Bawaslu recommends KPU to issue official deed of every assessment process in every stage. Do you think this is necessary?

It is necessary. There should be one at every stage so political party will have strong evidence of they want to challenge KPU’s decision at the court.

In regards with the implementation of Political Party Information System (Sipol), what is your position on the matter?

I think KPU needs Sipol to facilitate their job during the registration process. However, we should never let the implementation of Sipol to violate people’s right to participate in elections.

I think it would be better if KPU only use Sipol during the factual verification process, not at the very beginning at application stage. KPU could just oblige political party to use Sipol after the administrative assessment has been duly conducted. This would be much fairer for political parties.