Member of the House Commission II Mardani Ali Sera. Photo: Ist/Man

PARLEMENTARIA, Jakarta – Member of the House Commission II on home affairs, state administration, and general elections, Mardani Ali Sera shared his thoughts on the General Election Supervisory Agency’s (Bawaslu RI) recommendation to the General Elections Commission (KPU RI) to postpone the vote counting mechanism by Recapitulation Information System (Sirekap).

Sera maintained that while the use of Sirekap was postponed, manual vote counting must continue. As the General Elections Law provides, he asserted, the results of general elections should be based on manual vote counting.

“It would be a mistake for the KPU (if) it postpones the (manual) vote counting. In Law Number 7 of 2017 (it is stipulated that) the basis of results (in General Elections) is manual counting. It would be a mistake that (while vote counting) by Sirekap is being fixed, the manual (vote counting) is postponed. It would be, and I can’t stress it enough, a mistake. Let Sirekap work on its own while we continue manual recapitulation. Let’s go back to manual counting, the proper way to do it. Manual recapitulation,” Sera said in a video uploaded on his personal social media account, Monday (19/2/2024).

“It would be a mistake for the KPU (if) it postpones the (manual) vote counting. In Law Number 7 of 2017 (it is stipulated that) the basis of results (in General Elections) is manual counting. It would be a mistake (when vote counting) by Sirekap is being fixed, the manual (vote counting) is postponed.”

Speaking on another occasion, Head of Bawaslu RI Rahmat Bagja said that the Agency had conducted its plenary meeting and submitted its recommendation to the KPU to postpone the use of Sirekap as the vote counting tool, which is publicly accessible to all Indonesian people.

"Bawaslu hereby requests that KPU postpone the disclosure of data information on vote results," Bagja asserted to members of the press, Monday (19/2/2024).

With regard to the use of Sirekap, the KPU had temporarily stopped manual vote recapitulation gradually in several regions. Currently, the recapitulation is underway at the district level. The decision to stop recapitulation was based on the circulars distributed by several KPU offices at the regency/city level to the District Election Committee (PPK) members.

In the circulars, it was mentioned that according to the instruction of the KPU on 18 February 2024, PPK Plenary was to be postponed until 20 February 2024. At the time of writing this report, the KPU had yet to provide confirmation or explanation regarding the decision. (we/rdn/agl)