Political Parties Think the Implementation of Sipol Is Still Poor

Many political parties complaint to the Election Monitoring Body (Bawaslu) about the implementation of Political Party Information System (Sipol). In general, those parties think the implementation of Sipol is still infested with many problems and does not help the party registration process become easier.

Poor Internet Access in Some Areas

A representative of Indonesia Solidarity Party (PSI), Reza, says, 86 percent of internet users in Indonesia live in Java. Meanwhile, there are less than 3 percent of internet users in eastern part of the country, like East Nusa Tenggara, Maluku, and Papua.

Reza also says that the internet speed in those eastern area is far more inferior than in Java. It is difficult for party members in eastern areas to upload the necessary document online.

“To upload the necessary document, it doesn’t only require internet access, but also an access to fast internet because the documents are scanned documents,” says Reza in Jakarta (10/09).

Natalis Situmorang, a representative of the Indonesia Justice and Unity Party (PKPI), also complaint the same thing. According to Natalis, party members in Sulawesi and Maluku had a hard time uploading the necessary data for registration.

The Main Servers Frequently Down

A representative of Peaceful Secure Islam (Idaman), Ramdansyah, says, it takes a long time for him just to fulfill and upload the form on Sipol website because the server is frequently down.

“For example, in the Regency of Bima, since 10:25 until 11:00 in the morning, the server only displays blue screen. Some members in other areas were also unable to upload any data or documents, for example in South Kalimantan,” says Ramdansyah.

No Conversion Mechanism

Riko, a representative of the Indonesia Democracy Party-Struggle (PDI-P), says, KPU now does not provide any data conversion mechanism in Sipol, unlike in the 2014 party registration process. This makes party members have difficult time uploading data and documents to Sipol.

“In 2014, political party need only to prepare the data in spreadsheet (microsoft excel) format. Now, we need to convert the data ourselves and upload them one by one,” says Riko.

Majority of political parties hope KPU will make things easier for them to do registration. KPU should accept printed version of registration document tentatively to make the registration process easier, especially when the Sipol website is down.