Election And Hoax Crimes, Bagja: Bawaslu As Entrance

JAKARTA - The Indonesian Advocates Association Suara Advocate Indonesia (PERADI SAI) for the Juniver Girsang camp held an IVth national working meeting (Rakernas) from August 24, 2023, in Makassar, South Sulawesi.

One of the activities in the series of work meetings was the National Seminar entitled Election Crimes and Fake News with speakers from the Dean of the Faculty of Law, Hasanuddin University Hamzah Halim, Head of the South Sulawesi High Prosecutor's Office Leonard Eben Ezer Simanjuntak, Chairman of Bawaslu Achmad Bagja, Former Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court Hamdan Zoelva and moderator Andi F. Simangunsong.

Chairman of Bawaslu Achmad Bagja said that his party was the entrance to all violations that occurred in the process of holding elections and elections.

The mechanism, said Bagja, was that Bawaslu received a report and conducted a study on election/election violations. In conducting a study, Bawaslu can ask for information from the parties. The deadline for conducting this study is different between elections and elections. When the election is the deadline is a maximum of 14 working days, while in the election the maximum is 5 calendar days.

"As a result of his assessment, Bawaslu can be in the form of 2 things: Handling is terminated or forwarded/recommended to other authorized agencies," said Bagja.

Then he continued that in the context of handling election/election crimes, Bawaslu carried out joint handling with the Police and Prosecutors who were members of the Integrated Law Enforcement Center (Gakkumdu).

Professor of the Dean of the Faculty of Law, Hasanuddin University, Hamzah Halim, thinks that strengthening Bawaslu's capacity as a supervisory agency must be increased in terms of authority.

"Bawaslu must be given adequate resources and authority to carry out supervision," he said.

On the same occasion, Minister of Home Affairs Tito Karnavian in the video introducing the seminar stated that election conflicts would be very likely to occur in elections and regional elections later. Conflicts that are present not only come from participants, but also outside participants. Therefore, the community together with all stakeholders must be able to synergize in suppressing conflicts that often occur through the spread of hoaxes.

"The community and participants must campaign in a healthy and good manner, negative campaigns and hoaxes must be avoided because this is the root of conflict in the election," he said.

Deputy Head of the South Sulawesi High Prosecutor's Office (Sulsel) Zet Tadung Allo said that the prosecutor's office as a law enforcer has carried out a number of roles in supporting the 2024 General Election. This optimization also contains identification related to election crimes both before and after the 2024 election and also detects and prevents conflicts in elections.

Maybe friends heard that the Prosecutor's Office postponed the examination of cases to all election participants. Actually, the thing that must be straightened out is that this is done as an effort to prevent conflict. Don't let the results of the examination, people from the election participants be provoked so that it can cause conflict, but all cases will still be processed by the prosecutor's office," he said.

Peradi - SAI held the National Working Meeting for the fourth time in the midst of reconciliation efforts because there were three different leaderships. Juniver Girsang's camp emphasized that it is the motor of reconciliation to merge the three so that they can carry out the vision and mission of the organization. Peradi-SAI always maintains positive communication with various parties so that this noble intention is achieved.

"And if we are not united, we propose one code of ethics, one council of honor, one for testing," Juniver said.