TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – The Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) responded to MK judge Arief Hidayat who warned the KPU about the Sirekap problem ahead of the 2024 simultaneous elections.
“If it is not well prepared, it could repeat problems like in the last election,” Perludem Executive Director Khoirunnisa Nur Agustyati told Tempo on Thursday, May 9, 2024.
Ninis, as she is called, assessed that these problems could have an impact on the vote recapitulation process. Although as a tool, she said, Sirekap is the source of data used in the manual recapitulation process.
“The Sirekap issue is indeed one of the crucial issues raised in the PHPU (dispute over general election results) yesterday,” said Ninis.
As is known, former candidate numbers 01 and 03 Anies Baswedan-Muhaimin Iskandar and Ganjar Pranowo-Mahfud Md. in the presidential election dispute at the Constitutional Court had postulated the implementation of fraudulent elections through the misuse of the Sirekap application. One of them was about the KPU admitting that Sirekap data was not validated, making it inaccurate.
According to Ninis, the Sirekap problem in the election dispute occurred because the application could not function optimally. In addition, he assessed that Sirekap was not well prepared.
“The problems that occurred in Sirekap yesterday were not fixed, but instead were closed by the KPU,” said Ninis.
In fact, he said, Sirekap could be a medium for publishing election results to the public. In addition, Ninis underlined that the KPU did not provide an explanation to the public of what actually happened in Sirekap.
“The concern is that it makes the public distrust the use of technology in elections,” said Ninis.
Previously, constitutional judge Arief Hidayat mentioned Sirekap during the legislative election dispute hearing at the Constitutional Court Building on Wednesday, May 8, 2024. This was revealed by Arief while chairing the third panel hearing for case number 20-01-04-01/PHPU.DPR-DPRD-XXII/2024.
This case was filed by the Golkar Party. The banyan party alleged that there were additional votes for the Great Indonesia Movement Party or Gerindra for members of the Aceh Provincial DRPD/DPRA Dapil 6.
Initially, a member of the Aceh Election Supervisory Committee or Panwaslih, Yusriadi, revealed that there were differences in the results of the recapitulation of the manual calculation on form D of the Sub-district Results with Sirekap which was printed into a document. So that it disrupts the stages of recapitulating the correct number of votes.
Arief then replied, “I guess that means that sirekap as a tool is messing up, right?”
Airef said that once the manual recapitulation of calculations had been completed, the printed Sirekap should also show similar results. According to him, the problem of differences between manual recapitulation results and Sirekap occurs at all levels.
“Especially yesterday when we had the presidential election, the Sirekap was problematic. Indeed, Sirekap cannot be used, because the problem continues, Mr. Holik (KPU Commissioner Idham Holik) yes. For the record, because the elections are coming soon,” Arief explained.
This article was published on Tempo.co with the title “MK Judge Highlights Sirekap Ahead of Pilkada, Perludem: If Not Prepared, Problems in Elections Can Be Repeated”, https://nasional.tempo.co/read/1865804/hakim-mk-soroti-sirekap-menjelang-pilkada-perludem-kalau-tak-disiapkan-masalah-di-pemilu-bisa-terulang