Secretary General Of KPU Bantah Renkayasa Hasil Verifikasi Parpol Participants Pemilu 2024

Illustration of the General Election Commission (KPU). (Between)

Secretary General of the KPU, Bernad D Sutrisno, has denied intimidating members of the KPU secretariat at the provincial level to manipulate or manipulate the results of factual verification of political parties for candidates participating in the 2024 General Election.

"The accusation that I was intimidating and threatened by video calling on November 7, 2022 is not true because every activity has a technical team that has the task of explaining the substance," he said, when confirmed Monday, December 19.

He added that on November 7, 2022, his party only held meetings at the provincial KPU secretariat level which were routine activities in the context of preparing for the recapitulation of the results of factual verification of political parties for prospective election participants at the provincial level.

Furthermore, he explained that the secretariat at every KPU level has duties, functions, and authorities as supporting systems. The Secretariat provides administrative technical support to the chairman and members of the KPU, both at the central, provincial and district/city levels.

Among other things, they act as operators of the Political Party Information System and other information technology systems at the KPU.

"The connection is with the implementation of the election stages, the secretariat's authority is limited to facilitating the implementation of each election stage. Policies and decisions at each stage are the authority of the chairman and members of the central, provincial and district/city KPU," he said.

Previously, the issue of his relationship in alleged fraud in the form of data manipulation at the stage of factual verification of political parties was conveyed by the Civil Society Coalition at the Guard of the online Clean Election.

They conveyed, based on the complaints and information received, there were at least 12 regencies/cities and seven provinces suspected of following instructions from the Indonesian KPU to cheat when factual verification of political parties for candidates participating in the 2024 General Election took place.

The chronology of the fraud is as follows. On November 5, 2022, after verifying the factual political parties, the district/city KPU submitted the results of factual verification to the provincial-level KPU.

Then, on November 6, 2022, the provincial KPU will recapitulate the results of factual verification of political parties for all regencies/cities through the Sipol application.

Next, the practice of indications of first fraud allegedly occurred on November 7, 2022, when it was scheduled to submit the results of the recapitulation of factual verification of political parties by the provincial KPU to the KPU.

At that time, members of the central KPU urged the provincial KPU through video calls to change the verification status of certain political parties, from what initially did not meet the requirements to qualify. However, this was rejected by the provincial KPU.

Due to the rejection, the intervention model was changed to the Secretary General of the KPU who allegedly ordered the secretary of the provincial-level KPU to do the same. The Secretary General of the KPU is said to have ordered employees of the district/city Sipol operator to visit the provincial KPU office and then asked to change the verification status of political parties.

It was also reported that the Secretary General of the KPU had communicated via video call to instruct this directly accompanied by a transfer threat for employees who refused the order.