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Epic Stupidity: Roy Suryo Claims IT Implementation on General Election Inferior to Manual Counting

21 04 2009

roysuryoI actually was reluctant in sending this post since arguing about this guy is the same as wasting my time. However, when I read this news again I was disgusted by him and his commentary about Information Technology aspect is quite repulsive.

If you guys don’t know this person on the left, let me introduce you to Roy Suryo, a guy who claim himself an expert in Telematics and Multimedia. The funny thing is that eventhough he claim himself to be an expert in IT, he doesn’t have a degree in IT aspect. All I know that his bachelor degree is in Politics and his master degree is in Art.

Also, he is quite a notorious person in the internet community and IT community in our country. He is suspected of doing plagiarism by claiming he invented the “Indonesia Raya Stanza 3″ song which is a ridiculous claim since before his acknowledgement that song was initially broadcast in one of the TV station in Surabaya.

Anyway, this notorious person now claims that the general election comittee is ineffective in implementing IT to do the job by using an Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) as the tools to scan the voting paper automatically. He said and I quote “It’s a shame that last years general election counting method is better than this year automated one” which leads him to an epic facepalm of shame in the IT community.

So, Mr. Roy Suryo, you claim that automated counting is slow and worse than doing manual counting, huh? Well, let me tell you something Mr. Expert. How do you define better? As a starter, last year election is way different from this years election. In the vote count sector, 2004 general election has around 117 million voters while 2009 general election has around 171 million votes which is a 46% increase of the total of voters. My question is Mr. Expert, still want to do manual counting? Didn’t you here in the news that eventhough we use automated counting, the team is falling down in fatigue because of the amount of voters? In additional, a member suffered a heartstroke because of the fatigue in counting the votes. Imagine what will happen if we use manual counting to do the job.

Second, 2004 general election’s vote paper form is way different than 2009 general election’s vote paper. If last year we only choose the party and let the particular party choose its representatives to be the legislative members, now we choose our own representative to be the legislative members. Imagine the complexity of counting one representative’s vote by manual count. Are you sure you want to do this, Mr. Expert?

Third, you have no proof that manual counting is better than automated counting. You don’t know how many percent of error in manual counting and the count manipulation possibillity that the manual count offers. Manual counting will bring a far more chance in cheating the vote count in compare to the automated vote count which in contrast has a better restriction in the data entry and providing a far more accuracy in the vote count.

Lastly, Roy Suryo claims that to mitigate this issue he propose a solution by enhancing the contrast of the picture to improve the scanning process. My reaction was a cynical smirk in my face. This solution is an epic stupidity from a guy who claims himself a Telematics and Multimedia experts. By enhancing the contrast, you will merge the color in the picture which will rise the difficulty of a scanner in reading the watermark. Even I who doesn’t claim myself to be an expert and had only study Multimedia for 6 months know this fundamental knowledge. Are you really an expert Mr. Roy Suryo?

So in conclusion, I’m very much in doubt in this person ability in Information Technology. However, I must admit that this person gives a hilarious entertainment in the news. So as a parting gift, thank you for your hilarious rant about Information Technology, Mr. self-proclaimed Telematics and Multimedia expert.

News Source: http://pemilu.detiknews.com/read/2009/04/19/183530/1117791/700/roy-suryo-masak-ti-kalah-dengan-manual

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Megawati Sued “Say No To Megawati” Facebook Group For Black Campaign

12 04 2009

INDONESIA-VOTE-MEGA-SIGNOkay, for you Indonesians who read this post, I guess I don’t have to introduce you more about this person. However, for our foreign readers’ sake, Megawati is one of the running candidates for Indonesia’s President in 2009. She lost in the 2004th election period and now is running again for the 2009th election period. Megawati Soekarnoputri (It’s her full name), is the daughter of the first President of Indonesia, Soekarno. You could guess that her last name might be one of the factors why her popularity is very high in the low and medium level society.

Megawati has been a president of Indonesia once replacing Abdurahman Wahid, who is forced to resign due to his controversial action in freezing the army and taking over the commando selfishly (a very controversial character but I won’t discuss him). Anyway, in her time of being the President of Indonesia, she also can’t escape the controversy that she brought to the nation. A controversy that is most notable is her move to sell the country’s asset to the commercial sector, which bring far more protests among the nation.

Being the President of Indonesia, Megawati is quite a hot-headed woman. She can’t handle criticism well, one news that I’ve ever heard is that she has ever charged a student for stepping on her photo and put him in jail (I forgot the date of the publicity, help me here people). Anyway, her personality has led her to this case, the “Say No To Megawati” facebook group.

The “Say No To Megawati” facebook group (SNTM) is a group built in the facebook.com site which aspire the voice of people who don’t want Megawati to be the president of Indonesia. I don’t know when the date they were established, but they have more than 98,000 members who joined this group. Basically, this group creates thread about why Megawati doesn’t deserve to be the president of Indonesia and such, and the members of this group will shout out their opinions, just like your normal forum thread.

This group has strived with its discussion and made a lot of members and of course, Megawati and her party members are very pissed off at this group. They filed a report to the Bawaslu (an official observer of the national election), stating that this group is flagging a black campaign and have to be shut down. They claimed that their rival parties are involved in the establishment of this group and have to be prosecuted to justice.

This is of course a jaw-dropping and a ludacris reaction. Megawati is confusing black campaign with negative campaign. To be clear, black campaign is a type of campaign that dicreditize a person’s name by stating out baseless claim, constructing false fact, and manufacturing story that is an exaggeration to the real story. In Indonesia, black campaign is prohibited under the “name & dignity preservation” law.

As for the group, I’ve checked it out and join this group. I observed all the posts in the group and I found that none of the post can be categorized as a black campaign. First, the administrators of this group never construct baseless claims against Megawati, they only ask question and let the members give their opinions about it. So, there is no control in giving opinions in this group, which is pretty much resemble democracy.

Second, this group even encourages intellectual talk and prohibits their members to mock with inappropriate words. If you call “I don’t like Megawati because she is stupid” to be an inappropriate word, then what would you say otherwise to say your opinion? “I don’t like Megawati because she is a mentally incapable of thinking”? Even that, I’m sure she will still be pissed off. The questions ought to be “How can we say that we dislike her?”. It’s our voice and our opinion, deal with it and grow up.

Lastly, you can’t control how the people should give their opinion. It’s democracy, and by doing so you are shutting down free speech. Are you suggesting that there should be a media blockage like the one where the New Order era was in place? Are you suggesting that we should go back to the feudalistic country when Soeharto is in power?

People, we have to be very careful of her action. She is trying to shut down our voice which is one of the fundamental rights as agreed in the UN declaration. Sue this woman to the UN for shutting down our voice the same as when China’s government shut down their citizen’s voice and preventing YouTube to be online in China. It’s our country, protect our democracy to the end.

News Source: http://www.pemilu-online.com/index.php/Pemilu/PDI-P_Laporkan_Facebook_Say_No_to_Megawati_ke_Bawaslu.html


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Pemilu 2009: The Election System That Is Prone To Be Manipulated

11 04 2009

poster_denah_pemilu_2009It has been two days since the first wave of election day in Indonesia and overall, only 1% or about 700,000 votes have been received by the central comittee of national election. It’s pretty much sad since Indonesia has the population of more than 200 million people. One could say that the national election comittee is working very slow.

Another problem about the national election is the election system itself. I understand that the government wants the election system to be as democratic as it can be by giving us the people the choice to elect our own representative. However, it seems the majority of people don’t understand or don’t have any clue who their candidate representatives are. I could be bias here, since I don’t do any survey whatsoever, but that is what happen in my neighbourhood and my friends’. Most of the voters probably get their representative information from the poster on the street or when they went to the election booth. Even that alone didn’t give enough information about the representative such as what is his vision, work proposal, or education degree. Most of the poster focuses on the representative party and what number they are in the election vote paper.

So, now you tell me how would you get to know your candidate representatives? Another problem that is worth to be considered is how the citizen of Indonesia is listed as voters. The smallest coordinator in region which is the district or you can call it RT is responsible in collecting the citizen’s information to be listed as voters. Then, after they have collected and reported the information to the central comittee of national election, they will start handing out official invitation letters to your home telling that you are registered as a voter for the election.

The problem with this system? What about if the RT miss registered the citizens and how can the central know that the information that the RT has given is elligible? The RT never asked for our personal identification card, they can just manipulate the name by inserting bogus information to the list. Another point worth mention, we only have to show our invitation letter to vote. The local comittee never checks for our personal identification card. It is such a horrendous system, you can be substituted with another person to vote (let’s not forget the possibility that the invitation letter could be lost, stolen, or the RT decided not to send it to do conspirative manipulation).

Another loophole of this system, the inking system. If you have already voted for your representative, your finger will have to be inked as a proof that you have elected and prevent you from electing again. The problem is, ink is easily removed by a substance you called alcohol or thinner. Just smear a small amount and you are ready to elect again (Just stole or bribe somebody invitation letter and you are set).

Lastly, about the people who didn’t received the invitation letter. The RT can create an invitation letter and decided not to send it. In the election day, he can slip it to the election booth and make the voting paper marked to his advantage. So, Mr. Governor, have you thought about this possibility? Even the Bawaslu (The official observer of national election) is now busy handling over 237 cases of election misconduct and they have no answer to counter it whatsoever.

There has to be a fool-proof system for this national election so we can reduce the cheat attempts, so we can get a fair election. One answer to this catastrophic system is leave the paper system. It’s time for computerized system. You can still use papers as your medium of voting but computerized the registration system so there can be no cheat. The voters just have to give their personal identification number along with their fingerprint so they can elect. Mr. Governor, as long as you don’t improve the system, Pemilu 2009 will be a wasteful attempt and the votes might not be a representation of our voice. Give it a thought will ya’?


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