By: Elfitra Rahmawati) *
The official announcement of the results of the Presidential Election recapitulation was held on May 21, 2019, for weeks Joko Widodo managed to secure his position as President for the next 5 years, and for the second time he defeated the presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto.
But the hope of political stability after April 17, 2019 seems to be still limited to expectations. Speeches of hatred and actions of victory claims were almost carried out by Prabowo every day.
The Chairman of the Gerindra Party had indeed been defeated in the 2014 presidential election, he and his success team had claimed that there was a structured, systematic and massive election fraud.
The blood of the protesters was spilled when thousands of Prabowo’s sympathizers – Sandiaga took to the streets in the capital city. The action that should have finished at 6:00 p.m. finally had to continue until the dawn arrived.
Just because of political sentiment and fraudulent election allegations, the riots that occurred during the 2 days were filled with violence which resulted in the deaths of 8 demonstrators. Hundreds of protesters were injured when police fired rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons at protesters who threw stones at police and Molotov cocktails. Until now more than 400 people have been arrested because they were suspected of being involved in the riots.
To date, the Prabowo camp has claimed that large fraud will affect the overall results of the election that seems baseless. The Election Oversight Body (Bawaslu) rejected complaints from Prabowo’s supporters about fraud on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence.
On a different occasion Mahfud MD also said that electoral fraud does not only occur at this time. Cheating also occurred in many previous elections.
He also said that cheating was not only carried out by one candidate. Cheating by all candidates.
“The current election is the same, a lot of cheating. What’s the difference? “The previous general election in Pak Harto’s era was unilateral fraud, now all cheating,” said Mahfud.
Even so, Mahfud considered that the 2019 general election was far better than the New Order era. He said the election results in the New Order era were controlled because the election organizers were from the government.
While at this time, he said the KPU and Bawaslu as election organizers were formed by political parties. So that they do not believe if the KPU becomes the government’s accomplice.
He then told of his experience as a Constitutional Court judge, at which time he had tried a number of electoral disputes, namely the 2009 presidential election and a number of regional elections.
“It is indeed the KPU that is independent, cannot be controlled by the government. “If there are violations now, the KPU does, which violates the parties, not the government,” he said.
Related to this, his party also requested that all parties not make improper accusations to the KPU, for example by accusing fraud of recapitulation. He said it was difficult to cheat, recapitulation because it was done manually.
If this is the case, of course political elites cannot force people to do people power, because Indonesia is a rule of law.
The hottest case that had risen on the surface was the case of an incident in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, where in one of the shop houses had been found dozens of plastic bags containing sound cards that had been punched.
The wild voting seemed to be an underground operation that aims to boost votes for certain candidates and candidates. The reason was that the guideline was aimed at the target number 01 candidate and Nasdem Party candidate who incidentally was the son of the Indonesian Ambassador in Malaysia.
However, after being investigated, it turned out that the voters were fanatical supporters of the 02 camp, where it was carried out as an effort to massive and systematic delegation of the KPU.
Previously, former MPR Chair Amien Rais had asked the General Election Commission (KPU) to conduct a forensic audit of the KPU’s IT system, to prevent fraud from occurring in the 2019 Election.
It also criticized and planned to go to the KPU office to audit the forensic information technology (IT) system of the presidential election vote count.
However, this was ignored by KPU commissioner Pramono Ubaid, he considered that the proposal of the Prabowo – Sandiaga BPN Steering Board was an irrelevant matter, because the election results were not determined based on IT systems, but manual calculations in the field.
Reflecting on these indications, it can be concluded that the chances of Prabowo-Sandiaga to prove fraud in the 2019 presidential election are very thin and almost impossible. The presidential fraud cheating narration which has been voiced by the 02 faction was allegedly just an expression of disappointment at losing in the 2019 Election. Therefore, the public is expected to be observant and keep refraining from seeing the growing political dynamics, especially ahead of the Constitutional Court election dispute.
) * The author is a sociopolitical observer
