THE VIOLATION BY KPU OF THE PUBLIC INFORMATION DISCLOSURE ACT CONCERNING THE BLIND CITIZENS IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 2014

  • Authors: Amalia Nurma Dewi
  • From: Independent Scholar

Abstract:

We need to know our responsibilities and rights, so that we can play our role in society and live meaningful lives. To fully understand our responsibilities and our rights we need information. Information is essential for each component of citizenship or through information, governance distributes power and rights to citizen in order to conduct good governance. It has consequences in transparency – citizen must have knowledge about the governance, it is not just the governance which must have knowledge about the citizen. Furthermore, good governance involves distribution of information for every citizen, not just single collective groups. No groups should be neglected. In Indonesia the General Elections Commission has the responsibility to hold general elections, and it has signed an agreement with The Indonesian Parliamentary Center. The agreement says that KPU will be committed to apply The Public Information Disclosure Act to their services, but on the presidential elections of 2014 six organizations representing the blind community held a conference in Gedung Menggugat Indonesia to focus on the lack of clarity of information and socialization of the blind citizens in relation to the presidential elections. On the conference KPU was accused of discriminating the blind citizen, not giving them sufficient information, and thereby, violating their political rights. In the following we will analyze some weaknesses within The Public Information Disclosure Act itself and the implementation of the act by the KPU, and then, secondly, we will analyze the implementation of the act in relation to the concept of good governance.

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