Golkar party enjoys comfortable lead in vote count<\/p>\n
M. Taufiqurrahman
\nThe Jakarta Post
\nJakarta<\/p>\n
Having taken a slim lead in the vote count from the April 5
\nlegislative election over the past five days, the Golkar Party
\nnow enjoys a comfortable margin as the top vote getter.<\/p>\n
As of 11 p.m. on Friday night, Golkar had 21.02 percent of the
\n89,572,300 votes counted, while President Megawati
\nSoekarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P)
\nwas lagging behind with 19.62 percent.<\/p>\n
Golkar's lead, however, comes as no surprise because long
\nbefore the April 5 legislative election, scores of opinion polls
\nshowed the party of former president Soeharto's New Order regime
\nwinning the elections, especially outside of Java and in the
\neastern region of the country.<\/p>\n
If the vote count continues in this direction, the PDI-P could
\nend with less than 20 percent of the vote, a dramatic slump from
\nits 34 percent gain in the 1999 elections.<\/p>\n
Election study groups have estimated that 87 percent of over
\n147 million registered voters cast their ballots on April 5.<\/p>\n
The Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPUD) said earlier
\nthat in the capital, 4,542,726 people voted, or about 75 percent
\nof the approximately six million registered voters.<\/p>\n
There was no change in the positions of the other political
\nparties in the ballot count.<\/p>\n
The party of former president Abdurrahman \"Gus Dur\" Wahid, the
\nNational Awakening Party (PKB), stands in third with 12.04
\npercent of the vote, ahead of the United Development Party (PPP)
\nin fourth position with 8.28 percent.<\/p>\n
Two upstarts, the Democratic Party and the Prosperous Justice
\nParty (PKS) remained in the fifth and sixth positions,
\nrespectively. However, the Democratic Party has begun to inch
\naway from the sixth-placed party with 7.52 percent of the vote,
\ncompared to 7.14 percent for the PKS.<\/p>\n
The political vehicle of People's Consultative Assembly
\nSpeaker Amien Rais, the National Mandate Party (PAN), stands in
\nseventh place with 6.47 percent of the vote.<\/p>\n
Commenting on the vote tally, which has moved at a snail's
\npace over the past three days, the chief expert of the General
\nElections Commission (KPU)'s IT division, Akhiar Oemry, said
\nthere were no technical problems at the commission's data center.<\/p>\n
\"We have received no information about disruptions in our
\nsystem. The problems are resulting from sluggish data entry by
\nelection commissions at the subdistrict level (PPK),\" he told The
\nJakarta Post in a telephone interview.<\/p>\n
He said officials at some PPKs preferred to enter the data
\nonly after all of the ballots from the polling stations had been
\ncollected.<\/p>\n
\"This backlog is the chief reason why we have seen no progress
\nin the tally in the last few days,\" he said.<\/p>\n
Oemry said there was nothing the KPU could do about the
\nbacklog because there were no rules regarding the pace of data
\nentry.<\/p>\n
\"We have issued circulars on how to speed up the data entry.
\nHowever, it was of little use because the PPK officials did not
\nheed the order.\"<\/p>\n
Oemry dismissed the possibility that the backlog was an
\nattempt by PPK officials to manipulate the ballot count.<\/p>",
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