Bawaslu: Video Of Regional Heads Invites Support For Presidential Candidates To Violate Election Law

Coordinator Of Prevention Division, Community Participation, And Bawaslu Community Relations Lolly Suhenty/ANTARA/Fath Putra Mulya

MANADO - The General Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) said the video of regional heads expressing support and inviting the public to support certain presidential candidates (candidates) violates Article 283 of Law Number 7 of 2017 concerning Elections.

Coordinator of the Prevention Division, Community Participation, and Bawaslu Public Relations Lolly Suhenty said his agency had reviewed and analyzed the incident from a legal perspective.

"The incident regarding the support of regional heads for one of the figures who are predicted to become a presidential candidate, we will then conduct a legal study, we will also analyze it. In our legal study, it violates Article 283," said Lolly in Manado, North Sulawesi, quoted by ANTARA, Thursday, September 21.

Article 283 referred to by Lolly reads "(1) State officials, structural officials, and functional officials in state positions as well as other state civil servants are prohibited from holding activities that lead to partiality to election participants before, during, and after the campaign period."

"(2) The prohibition as referred to in paragraph (1) includes meetings, invitations, appeals, calls or gifts to state civil servants within their work units, family members, and the community."

Lolly's statement refers to the circulation of a video of the Mayor of Surakarta Gibran Rakabuming and the Mayor of Medan Bobby Afif Nasution inviting the public to support the presidential candidate from the PDI Perjuangan (PDIP) Ganjar Pranowo.

Lolly said the results of Bawaslu's studies and analysis related to the video had been forwarded to the Ministry of Home Affairs (Kemendagri) for guidance. This is because Gibran and Bobby are regional heads under the auspices of the Ministry of Home Affairs.

"We will continue (to) the Ministry of Home Affairs so that coaching is carried out because the subject is the regional head. We have continued and we have carried out plenaries regarding this," said Lolly.

The video of Gibran and Bobby uploaded by PDIP's official Twitter account, @PDI_Perjuangan. In the video they are seen wearing red clothes bearing the PDIP logo.

"I Gibran Rakabuming invite all residents to flock to the polling station (voting station) on February 14 to vote PDI Perjuangan with Pak Ganjar, thank you," said Gibran in one video.

Previously, PDIP Secretary General Hasto Kristiyanto had also opened his voice regarding the video.

He explained that the rules in elections that should not be done are to carry out campaigns before their time and that was done by the campaign team. Meanwhile, the party bearing the white-nosed bull admits that it does not yet have a campaign team.

"We don't have a campaign team yet because the campaign team will definitely be registered at the KPU after the presidential and vice presidential candidate pairs were formed," said Hasto.