Claims by overseas voters cast spotlight polls commission

Concerns include voters not receiving mail ballots, tampered lists and name duplication

- Linda Yulisman

Some Indonesians based abroad who are preparing to vote in the upcoming elections have flagged concerns over alleged irregularities, raising questions about whether Indonesia's General Elections Commission (KPU) can conduct a fair and accountable voting process on Feb 14.

The alleged irregularities include voters not receiving mail ballots in Singapore, voter lists being tampered with in Malaysia, and voter names being duplicated in New York.

While not all these claims are well founded, they could further dent the credibility of the KPU which has committed missteps in the past and become politicised, -said experts.

Some 1.75 million Indonesians living across 128 countries and territories are registered to vote in the 2024 elections, out of 204.8 million eligible voters in total. In Malaysia alone, some 832,000 Indonesians are eligible to vote, the single largest group of voters abroad.

The Valentine Day's vote is to elect not just Indonesia's next president and vice-president, but also legislators and councillors at national and regional levels.

Ms Titi Anggraini of election watchdog Association for Elections and Democracy, or Perludem, said logistics have been an issue in past elections, given the vast territory, huge number of voters and validity of overseas voter lists, and the 2024 elections are no exception.

During the 2019 elections, for instance, thousands of ballots in Malaysia were cast before overseas polling began, triggering concerns about vote rigging. After an investigation by the Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu), the KPU was instructed to hold a revote for nearly 320,000 voters in Kuala Lumpur.

Ms Titi noted that the distribution of 1.2 billion ballot papers to 823,220 polling stations at home and abroad is "very challenging", especially with the extreme weather in February, a month that brings heavy rainfall and high tides to most of the country.