"We anticipate (the risk of foul play during the 2024 elections) by upholding professionalism as the organizers," KPU Member Mochammad Afifuddin stated here on Wednesday.
Afifuddin pressed for taking all requisite precautionary measures against foul play during the political event.
"It is a contest. People's attempts to win by using a good or bad way, right or wrong, those must be anticipated," he emphasized.
Hence, the government has established an agency, called the General Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu), to monitor the general election, he pointed out. He also highlighted that media and members of the general public can contribute to the efforts in monitoring the 2024 general election, so that the grand political event would be held in accordance with the applicable laws and regulations.
He made the remarks in correlation with the statement from Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal, and Security Affairs Mahfud MD during a seminar at the Syarif Hidayatullah Islamic State University here on Tuesday, May 23.
At the seminar, titled "Media and Politic Literacy Prior to 2024 General Election: Mitigating Ethnic, Religious, Racial, and Inter-group Conflicts and Improving Community Involvement," the minister stated that foul play was indeed found to have occurred in the last five general elections.
"Because during five times of the general elections, in 1999, 2004, 2009, 2014, and 2019, there was foul play. However, this time is different, fellows, for the ones cheating now are the participants themselves and not the government," he emphasized.
He drew attention to the stark differences when compared to the instances during the New Order era, when people already knew that the results, on which person and parties had won the elections, had been planned since the start.
"In the New Order era, it cannot be denied that the one doing foul play is the government itself towards the people," he pointed out.
However, in the last five general elections, foul play was perpetrated by the participants themselves, which ended up spreading among the people, Mahfud concluded.
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Translator: Tri Meilani A, Mecca Yumna
Editor: Azis Kurmala
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