Machfud Arifin Accuses Risma Of Intervening In The Pilkada For The Sake Of Eri Cahyadi, Bawaslu Firmly Denies

JAKARTA - The Surabaya City General Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) stated that Tri Rismaharini was not proven to have committed a violation of the Surabaya Regional Head Election in connection with the alleged hidden campaign.

Chairman of the Surabaya City Bawaslu Muhammad Agil Akbar in the 2020 regional election results dispute trial said Tri Rismaharini's letter to Surabaya residents to choose one of the candidate pairs did not list the position of Mayor of Surabaya.

"Then, the letter has a barcode which then when scanned it will penetrate the East Java PDIP," said Agil Akbar as quoted by Antara, Tuesday, February 2.

The letter was issued on November 22, 2020, which is a Sunday or holiday so that Tri Rismaharini did not need a campaign leave permit.

Meanwhile, to make the case for using the meeting in his capacity as the Mayor of Surabaya to invite the candidate pair number 01 Eri Cahyadi-Armuji to choose, Bawaslu noted that Tri Rismaharini campaigned 21 times and there were no allegations of election violations.

Regarding the discovery of billboards with pictures of Eri Cahyadi and Armuji and Tri Rismaharini, Bawaslu assessed that these billboards were not a campaign props because at that time they had not been named as candidates.

There are also candidate pairs Machfud Arifin and Mujiaman said that the implementation of the Election for Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Surabaya was marked by structured, systematic, and massive violations (TSM), including the involvement of the city government in facilitating candidate pair number 01 Eri Cahyadi-Armuji.

The fraud mentioned by the petitioner, among others, was Tri Rismaharini, who was still the mayor at that time, seemed to be a symbol of winning the Eri Cahyadi-Armuji pair and using central government social assistance to win the pair.

However, the petitioner did not include evidence for the massive argument from the Surabaya City Government's involvement in winning over one of the candidates.

Related parties Eri Cahyadi-Armuji also denied involvement in the Surabaya City Government programs carried out at Tri Rismaharini's residence and instead mentioned Machfud Arifin and Mujiaman who more often involved state civil servants.