JAKARTA - Gadjah Mada University (UGM) Political Science and Government Science expert Abdul Gaffar Karim said the knowledge of the general election organizers was the main factor in the success of a democratic party in Indonesia.
This was conveyed by Abdul in the International Seminar on Election Governance entitled "Electoral Governance in Indonesia: Adopting Technology, Promoting Transparency, and Enhancing Integrity" at the KPU Building, Jakarta, Tuesday 29 March.
"The lack of structured knowledge and competence of the election management parties has become a problem in the success of holding elections in Indonesia," said Abdul.
To overcome these obstacles, according to him, relevant stakeholders need to provide higher education opportunities about election governance for election organizers.
The chairman of the General Election Commission (KPU) of the Republic of Indonesia Ilham Saputra added that the knowledge and competence of election organizers related to election management is indeed something that needs to be improved so that the democratic party can be held better.
Therefore, since 2015, the KPU has made efforts to increase the knowledge and competence of election governance by the organizers through the provision of strata-2 (S2) scholarships in the field of election governance.
"Since 2015, the KPU has collaborated with the Indonesian Election Governance Education Consortium, which consists of twelve universities, to provide postgraduate scholarships for KPU employees in order to increase capacity, competence, and professionalism through higher education," said Ilham.
The 12 universities are the University of North Sumatra, Andalas University, Lampung University, University of Indonesia, Padjajaran University, Diponegoro University, Airlangga University, Hasanudin University, Nusa Cendana University, Sam Ratulangi University, and Cendrawasih University.
During his master's education, Ilham said that the scholarship recipients would study information technology approaches in elections, electoral research, even those things that were published in journals that were accessible to the general public.
Thus, the knowledge of electoral governance owned by the organizers can be disseminated to the public.
In the future, both Ilham and Abdul Gaffar Karim hope that the scholarship program can be optimized and utilized by more election organizers.
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