The Story of "Little People" in Indonesian Elections

*Tulisan ini dimuat juga di website The Indonesianists pada tanggal 24 Mei 2014.

Legislative election has been recently completed. Political elites are now busily preparing themselves for the presidential election this July. While all eyes stick to the presidential election, this article is about to tell that democracy is not only belong to the elites, but also involved “little people” and one of the is Kelompok Penyelenggara Pemungutan Suara (KPPS) or voting organizer group. KPPS have crucial role to determine whether the election become a success.

KPPS could be seen as key actors in “street level” politics in Indonesian electoral system, besides large institutions such as Komisi Pemilihan Umum (KPU) and political parties at the higher level. Their presence is essential to determine the integrity of the election as whole, because votes in general election calculated from each Tempat Pemungutan Suara (TPS) or polling stations that run by KPPS.

Tracing back the history of election in Indonesia, we could learn that the use of ad-hoc groups for organizing elections at the lowest level had been the case since the first election in 1955. Herbert Feith (1999) notes that the 1955 election was organized at the grassroots by Panitia Penyelenggara Pemungutan Suara (PPPS) or the voting organizing committee, which consisted of 15 people for each Tempat Pemungutan Suara (TPS) or polling station. This committee consisted mainly ofvillage officials which were assisted by 3-5 persons known as Pembantu Keamanan Pemungutan Suara (PKPS) or voting security assistants. Interestingly, different from the current election, members of PPPS and PKPS could come from political parties. Although some PPPS and PKPS members were also members of political parties, they were able to demonstrate independent attitude, which resulted in the high degree of fairness and freedom of the 1955 election.

In the New Order, the organizing group for election at the lowest level also called KPPS since its first election in 1971, the same name as today. In carrying out elections, William Liddle (1992) mentioned that the New Order government manipulated all of the election institutions, including KPPS, to win Golkar. A study by Irwan and Adriana in 1995 found more than 82.5 per cent (510 of 618 cases) electoral fraud was committed by member of KPPS (Hidayat 2003). Instead of being resulted from KPPS’ own willingness to support Golkar, the fraud was allegedly caused by the threat of army soldiers who were assigned to monitor election at the village level. Members of KPPS in New Order could be interrogated by the army just because they were joking for not support Golkar.

Photo 1. President Suharto visited a TPS in Jakarta in 1971 Election (Source: Arsip Nasional RI)

What about KPPS since Reformasi era, specifically during the 2014 election? According to KPU Decree No 3/2013, the KPPS consists of seven persons from the community who manage elections in each TPS. KPPS members are assisted by two other people also from the community who serve as security officers in TPS. These people should be non-partisan. KPPS members derived from the names suggested by village officials. This membership mechanism is actually problematic because providing large authority to village officials in appointing KPPS members can provide some opportunity for nepotism. There were 545,803 TPS in the 2014 legislative election, which means that more than 3 million Indonesians were involved as KPPS in the election throughout the country. Their duties are among others, to execute voting and vote counting at polling stations, to secure the integrity of the ballot boxes after the vote count and after the ballot boxes sealed and to fill in recapitulation reports of vote counting results. These are not easy tasks and very time consuming.

Mardirahardjo (65), father of my colleague, Septi, is one of the members of KPPS in TPS 21 RW 17, Prawirodirjan, Gondomanan sub-district, Yogyakarta. He went home at 06.00 am on Thursday (10/4), after working since 7am the previous day. His TPS is a big one (433 voters, where there is a cap on 500 per TPS) Moreover, because of the open list system, the task of counting votes has become more arduous as members have to count the votes for political party as well as votes for candidates from each party. Since the day of election, Mardirahardjo suffered from a respiratory problem due to fatigue. In West Sumatera, Lampung and Bengkulu some KPPS members died allegedly due to the exhaustion of vote counting (Antaranews.com 10/4).

KPPS members get paid for their service, but it is only around Rp 300,000- Rp 450,000 for work that requires weeks of commitment. In Nunukan of North Kalimantan, KPPS members withdrew from their duties in protest at the small wage they received. In Ende of East Nusa Tenggara province, KPPS members held the ballot boxes hostage as they waited for the payment of their honorariums from the KPU (Tribunnews.com 30/3). Despite those incicents, most KPPS members are not concerned about this small fee and seeing it as a form of service to the country.

With that low honorarium, many committees have taken on the initiative to encourage citizens to vote. In Bandung and other places, KPPS members dressed up and built unique structures of the TPS to attract people to exercise their voting rights. Most of these KPPS raised the funds from the community themselves as the KPU only provided Rp 750,000 (around US $ 75) per TPS.

Photo 2. Chinese-costumed KPPS members in one of TPS in Bandung (Source: detik.com)

Unfortunately, some members of KPPS were committed election fraud . Since KPPS members had direct access to ballots and votes recapitulation report, KPPS membership is prone to misuse. In Maluku and South Sumatra Provinces, the Election Monitoring Agency (Bawaslu) uncovered fraud and recommended a re-vote. The fraud usually related to the manipulation of voting resuts to one party or legislative candidate in a TPS. In a polling station in Boyolali of Central Java Provice for instance, 70 per cent of the ballots was allegedly manipulated by the KPPS members. In addition, the villagers were also intimidated by village officials and one member of KPPS to give their votes to a candidate from Partai Demokrat (Solopos.com 17/4). As retaliation, KPPS members who were “helpful” to manipulate the votes, got some money from the party or candidate.

Regardless of the frauds committed by some KPPS members, the active involvement of citizens in the election portrayed a clear picture that the Indonesian democracy is not only run by the political elites. KPPS, which is the lowest level of election apparatus, have played important role in determining the quality of election. They carried out difficult and complex election procedures, with huge risk and small compensation. In future, there should be more appreciation to these “little people”, who are undoubtedly significant democratic players. Honorarium reward to them must be adjusted in order to “professionalize” KPPS. More broadly, the high quality of election requires more modern and mature procedure. Without significant revitalization of election system and procedure, we cannot hope for more clean, free and fair election.

Dini Suryani
A Master of Asia-Pacific Studies student at the Australian National University