Bawaslu Urged To Handle Netrality Violations Of Village Heads In The 2024 Pilkada
JAKARTA - Sociologist from Trunojoyo University Madura, Aminah Dewi Rahmawati, urged the Election Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) to be more assertive in handling violations of neutrality to villages (kades) which are increasingly common ahead of the 2024 Pilkada.
This is because Law Number 6 of 2014 concerning Villages has firmly prohibited village heads from practicing politics. Article 51 letter (g) of the law states that village heads are prohibited from being administrators of political parties and in the letter (j) it is prohibited to participate and/or engage in general election campaigns and/or regional head elections.
A similar situation occurred during yesterday's presidential election. What the state apparatus above it did would be an example for the apparatus below it. So, it's not strange if the violation of neutrality continues," Aminah said, Sunday, November 3, 2024.
According to him, actually it is not difficult to minimize cases of neutrality violations involving village heads. Bawaslu only needs to enforce the rules and not selective in punishing village heads or candidate pairs who are proven to 'force' the village heads to side with them.
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"During the 2024 presidential election and the 2024 legislative election, there were incidents like that, Bawaslu was silent. This is what they have to change, as part of the evaluation of the implementation of elections to elections," he added.
Aminah understands that many village heads are forced to become a winning team for candidate pairs because they are intimidated and threatened with criminalization under the pretext of poor village fund management. However, this situation occurred due to carelessness from the village head himself.
He also emphasized that the position of village heads is actually very strong as a clean determinant of the 2024 Simultaneous Regional Head Elections from fraudulent practices. Moreover, the number of village heads reaches tens of thousands and is connected through various village apparatus associations.
If they have a movement against practical politics, the position of the village head is very strong. When several times the village head demonstrated regarding the Village Law, the village government too. If they were in the neutral position of the village head and they dared to carry out the movement, I thought, it was extraordinary, "explained Aminah.