Papua police chief Inspector General Tito Karnavian (JUBI)
Jayapura, 25/2 (Jubi) – Papua police chief Inspector General Tito Karnavian warned that groups seeking to sabotage elections using violence and calls for a boycott would face to the full force of the law.
Tito said such a crime is punishable up to two years.
“So, you can be subjected to the law if inviting people to not vote in the elections” Tito told a press conference at Aston Jayapura Hotel before a dialogue on the elections organized by the Jayapura branch of the Indonesian Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) on Monday (25/2).
He said seven groups have stakes in elections in Papua.
The first stakeholder is the organizer, the Election Commission. It must be neutral and able to accommodate the interest of all parties including the candidates.
The second one is the Election Monitoring Board (Bawaslu), who play the role of a referee. It also needs to be neutral and understand all laws related to the elections as well as other laws and regulations.
“The problem is if we’re just speaking about its neutrality, it knew all the rules. But is it easy or can they do it? It’s uncertain, because Bawaslu at the provincial level only has 5 officials,” he said.
The third one, further he said, is the regional government. The government should be above political parties but in the current political system regional heads are usually also the cadres of political parties. Many of local chiefs are political party leaders and this raises questions about their neutrality.
The fourth is the Army and Police. They work to secure the implementation of the elections.
“Of course they should be neutral. However in some cases, some security personnel cannot not be neutral.”
And the fifth stakeholder is the political parties and election candidates. Ideally they must show sportsmanship. “But the reality is all of them are ready to win but not ready to lose,” Tito said.
He continued that the sixth stakeholder is the mass media, which should encourage people to use their right to vote. “Mass media is also playing the role of a controller, to inform the progress of the election and to encourage people to vote. We hope the mass media prefer to play its role as a peacemaker without losing their professionalism,” he said.
People are the seventh. “Their main important role is using their voting right while their second role is to be a controller in particular to monitor the NGOs, the community and religious leaders,” he said. (Jubi/Indrayadi TH/rom)
