31 Election Supervisors Experience Violence When Disbanding Campaigns That Violate Health Protocols

ILLUSTRA TION / VOI

JAKARTA - Member of the Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu), Mochammad Afifuddin, said that 31 of his ranks experienced violence when they tried to dissolve the 2020 Pilkada campaign that violated health protocols.

According to Afif, the 31 election supervisors received violence because the participants or the campaign team of the candidate pairs did not accept that their physical campaign activities were disbanded.

"Bawaslu noted that at least 31 election supervisors in 270 regions holding regional elections were subjected to violence while carrying out their duties. The violence was triggered by efforts to dissolve the campaign," Afif said in his statement, Tuesday, November 17.

Afif said the violence was in the form of intimidation or verbal violence experienced by 19 election supervisors and physical violence experienced by 12 supervisors.

"Violence is experienced by election supervisors in the regions down to the sub-district / village level. For example, such as verbal violence received by the District Supervisory Committee in Banyuwangi Regency," he said.

During the 50 campaign days, there were 1,448 face-to-face 2020 Pilkada campaign activities that violated health protocols during the 509 campaign days.

"The violations committed were the crowd without keeping their distance, not wearing masks, and unavailability of hand washing facilities," said Afif.

Afif said, there is an increasing trend of health protocol violations in physical campaigns. Bawaslu divides five periods per 10 days. In the first 10 days, Bawaslu recorded 118 campaigns that violated health protocols.

Then in the second 10 days, there were 268 campaigns that violated, in the third 10 days there were 331 campaigns, the fourth 10 days there were 333 campaigns, and the fifth 10 days there were 398 physical campaigns that violated health protocols.

Bawaslu provides two types of sanctions against these violations, namely a written warning or the dissolution of the activity.

"Dissolution is carried out by election supervisors, Satpol PP, and the police based on Bawaslu's recommendations. Dissolution is carried out if warnings of violations of health protocols (prokes) are ignored," said Afif.

"Apart from that, there were campaign organizers who took the initiative to disband the activity after being warned by the election supervisor," he added.