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Indonesia's poll security fears grow as TNI's role questioned
Jakarta Globe - July 6, 2014
The latest opinion poll from Roy Morgan puts Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo at 52 percent, just four points ahead of Prabowo Subianto, a former military general, setting up what is expected to be the tightest presidential race in Indonesian history.
But with the stakes so high, the final margin of victory needs to be sufficiently wide to stave off the possibility of violent protests by supporters of the losing candidate, says Gen. Budiman, the Army chief of staff.
"If the difference is slim, we have to watch out," he told reporters at Army headquarters in Central Jakarta on Sunday. "If it's less than five percentage points, then we have to be careful. But if it's more than that, then it's safe," he added.
Budiman said the potential for poll-related violence was particularly high this year given how polarized the campaign had become, but said he hoped that the series of five presidential debates, which concluded on Saturday night, had served to ease some of the tensions between supporters of the rival candidates.
He said the Army had drawn up a map of conflict "hot spots" – regions with a history of violence in the aftermath of local elections – and would be on heightened alert in those areas immediately before, during and after election day. Most of the areas identified as conflict-prone are in Java and Sumatra.
"The military needs to be on alert the entire time, right up until the KPU" – the General Elections Commission – "issues the final results of the vote count. The situation should go back to normal once the results are out," Budiman said.
The Army chief also vowed to maintain the neutrality of the armed forces – active service personnel are prohibited under electoral law from voting – but speculation is rife of a concerted effort to tamper with the balloting in favor of Prabowo.
"There's a big plot being prepared to prevent Joko from becoming president," Karyono Wibowo, the director of the Indonesia Public Institute, a pollster and think tank, said on Friday.
He claimed a "sense of solidarity" behind the military's support for Prabowo – "the only military candidate" – and warned that it was "extremely dangerous" for the military to take sides. "That's why the people must demand that the military remains committed to being neutral," Karyono said.
He did not elaborate on the "big plot," but said that the publication of recent surveys showing Prabowo pulling level with Joko, and even overtaking him, pointed to a concerted and underhanded campaign to sway public opinion in Prabowo's favor.
"We're talking about a huge leap in poll numbers over a very short period of time. How could Prabowo boost his numbers in so drastically and even surpass Joko? It's impossible. It's inconceivable," he said.
Karyono was speaking just a day before award-winning US investigative journalist Allan Nairn, who in recent weeks has published damning excerpts from a 2001 off-the-record interview that he conducted with Prabowo, alleged a conspiracy by the Army Special Forces (Kopassus) – a unit that the candidate once commanded – and the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) to rig the ballot.
Nairn, writing on his blog, cited sources who discussed the matter at Kopassus headquarters as telling him that "the operation is designed to ensure that the July 9 vote count will be won by" Prabowo.
"The topic was a covert operation to make Prabowo president. Among those present were veterans of covert ops in Aceh and West Papua," Nairn wrote. "Although it is extraordinary – stealing a civilian election for one of the candidates – the commander referred to it as an extension of normal special forces tactics, 'an operation a la Kopassus."
Nairn cited his sources as describing the operation as involving "ballot tampering, street violence, and threats against Jokowi supporters, and could involve, in extremis, 'the elimination of people.'"
"The ballot tampering part of the Kopassus/BIN operation – at least as discussed at the level my sources know of – does not involve the national central vote tabulation, but rather the count in key local precincts," he wrote.
"It involves the ongoing deployment of covert money [...] The purpose of that money, almost all in cash, is to 'play with the ballot papers' by placing agents inside counting rooms or paying off state employees who guard the ballot boxes.
"This effort is particularly concentrated in Central, West, and East Java" – dovetailing with Army chief Budiman's conflict hot spot map – "but is said to involve parts of all provinces."
Nairn said his sources would not identify who was bankrolling the effort, but that it was being overseen by senior commanders – with the direct approval of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, whose Democratic Party last week endorsed Prabowo.
The BIN is also in on the conspiracy, Nairn claimed. "The current BIN commander, ex-Army general Marciano Norman, is said to fully on board with the operation. Marciano is close to Aburizal Bakrie, the oligarch and Prabowo supporter," he wrote.
Prabowo's campaign team has previously written off Nairn's allegations as "merely the ramblings of a foreigner who wants to discredit others."
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