Universitas Gadjah Mada formed a Working Group (Pokja) to study the deaths of officials in the 2019 Presidential Election. The group consists of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, the Faculty of Psychology and the Faculty of Medicine, Public Health and Nursing (FKKMK).
This working group will conduct studies and research related to the high rate of election officers’ mortality using various scientific perspectives so that it can be thoroughly researched what factors cause the incident.
Dr. Abdul Gaffar Karim, a lecturer at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences as the Coordinator of the working group, said there were a number of allegations about the cause of the case. Some suspect that this case was intended to disrupt the election, others say that the officers fell ill and later died from depression due to accusations of cheating.
“The initial suspicion is that they died from pressure from the political elite, but we will confirm the results of the field study first,” he said at the Digilib Café of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences on Thursday (10/5) during a press conference.
Gaffar said, he had held a focus group discussion (FGD) at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences before on Wednesday (8/5), which was attended by representatives of the three faculties. They concluded a number of things. Besides suspecting that cheating was also a potential cause, they also agreed to consider the death of hundreds of polling organizers (KPPS) in the 2019 Election as an extraordinary event.
“It’s extraordinary because we don’t expect that people can die just by working as an officer. So, this is extraordinary. However, we see no indication of election delegitimation,” he said.
In the FGD they also discussed about allegations of excessive workload imposed on election officials. They found indications of problems in the recruitment process of KPPS officers.
“For example, the team of doctors said health certificates were often made in bulk and not based on adequate health checks,” he said.
Dr. Erwan Agus Purwanto, Dean of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, also expressed his concern and condolences over the deaths of hundreds of polling organizers in the 2019 elections simultaneously. According to him, it is necessary to find out the main cause of death and illness of 440—which might increase to thousands—of KPPS officers.
According to him, it seems impossible if the cause of death is due to fatigue. He also did not want this case to be used to delegitimize the results of the 2019 elections as alleged by various parties.
“This has encouraged us to intervene to understand the cause of the officers’ deaths so we can inform the results to the public,” he said.
Erwan Agus Purwanto said that the group immediately worked to discuss the technical matters in the field. They will send two representatives from each faculty involved to work with 10 campuses in Indonesia that have studies on elections, such as Universitas Lampung, Universitas Indonesia, Universitas Airlangga, and Universitas Cendrawasih.
Dean of FKKMK, Prof. Ova Emilia, said that learning from the incidents of many election official victims, it is necessary to develop more detailed SOPs related to the health checks of election officials.
“In terms of health, of course we need to make SOPs and clear implementation of the requirements and health checks. The medical examination is not just a piece of paper but we must really check both their physical and mental health,” she explained.
Source: https://www.ugm.ac.id/id/berita/17923-ugm-bentuk-pokja-kaji-meninggalnya-petugas-pemilu
