APSN | Slap on the wrist for Babinsa canvasser

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Slap on the wrist for Babinsa canvasser

Jakarta Post - June 9, 2014

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Haeril Halim, Jakarta – The Indonesian Military (TNI) said Sunday that it had taken disciplinary action against two officers allegedly involved in political canvassing for Gerindra Party's presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto, a former Army's Special Forces (Kopassus) commander.

Army spokesperson Brig. Gen. Andhika Perkasa said that a village supervisory non-commissioned officer (Babinsa), identified as First Corp. Rusfandi, had been found guilty of vote canvassing in Gambir in Central Jakarta.

"It was purely on his own initiative and [as member of the Army] it is a violation. However, our two-day investigation found that First Cpl. Rusfandi did not have the intention of forcing AT [the resident who lodged the complaint] into voting for one of the presidential candidates," Andhika said.

Andhika said that Rusfandi was not campaigning for Prabowo. "Rusfandi unintentionally pointed to the picture of candidate number one [Prabowo] when trying to confirm AT's preference. This may have meant that AT felt Rusfandi had 'directed' him to vote for that particular candidate," Andhika said.

Rusfandi has been sentenced to 21 days in the Army detention center and will not be promoted for the next 18 months.

The Army has also reprimanded Gambir military district commander Capt. Inf. Saliman for negligence. Saliman is also barred from promotion, in his case for six months. "Saliman made no attempt to warn or stop Rusfandi," Andhika said.

The allegation against the Babinsa first emerged on a social media site on Thursday.

Media reports said that early on Tuesday, a resident from a predominantly Chinese neighborhood in Central Jakarta was visited by a man claiming to be a Babinsa who said he had been assigned to verify the data of eligible voters in the neighborhood. He was later seen to be registering those locals intending to vote for Prabowo.

Separately, TNI commander Gen. Moeldoko maintained that the Gambir incident was an isolated case. He said that there had been no instruction from the TNI headquarters to conduct vote canvassing.

Moeldoko also said that the Elections Monitoring Agency (Bawaslu) had allowed the Army to conduct an internal investigation and did not consider it to be an election violation.

"Bawaslu did a spot check and found no election violation. What was reported by residents was not proven. Residents in the neighborhood said that they were ready to testify that no such incident happened," Moeldoko said in press conference Jakarta on Sunday.

Despite Moeldoko's assurance of the TNI's neutrality, spokesman for the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle's (PDI-P) presidential candidate Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, Abdul Karding Kadir, said that there had been a systematic effort to use Babinsa to mobilize support for the Prabowo-Hatta Rajasa ticket.

"I sense that the incident is not isolated, but rather a well-planned move based on instruction. I sense that this is an elaborate move masterminded by those with connections to the TNI," Karding said as quoted by kompas.com on Sunday.

Karding said that his allegations were not without evidence because similar incidences had also taken place in Yogyakarta, North Sumatra and Central Java. He said that it was impossible for junior officers in the TNI to carry out such action without the consent of their superiors.

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/06/09/slap-wrist-babinsa-canvasser.html.