Committee officials face jail threat over poll veto

UJUNGPANDANG, South Sulawesi (JP): Four regency elections committee chairmen in this province were threatened with imprisonment on Wednesday for refusing to endorse poll results in their areas.

Deputy secretary of the Provincial Elections Committee Haswan said the committee chairmen from Pangkep, Sidrap, Janeponto and Takalar regencies could face three-month prison terms or Rp 10 million (US1,450) fines for not endorsing the results.

He said their "stubbornness to reject the polls" could be punishable under the General Elections Law.

"They could be categorized as trying to sabotage the general election. To make things worse, their refusal would prevent their regencies from installing their new legislators," Haswan said.

It was the second instance of polling committee members being threatened with legal action for not validating the ballot results. On Tuesday the East Java elections supervisory committee threatened chapter leaders of 23 small parties with jail sentences of 10 years if they went ahead with their plan to reject the polls.

Haswan said the four heads of regency elections committees had refused to endorse the final tallies unless reports of elections law violations were settled.

Head of the provincial supervisory committee Abbas Said said he had reprimanded the regency elections committees for holding up the tabulation process.

"If they fail to submit the final tallies before the July 7 deadline, we will ignore the four regencies when we send the poll results from the province to Jakarta," Abbas said.

The South Sulawesi elections committee agreed on Wednesday to send two teams to verify reports of elections violations across the province. One team is led by Yunus Tekeng and has six members, while the other is headed by D'jas Langga with 14 members.

Responding to the row, Sulawesi military commander Maj. Gen. Suaidi Marasabessy called on all parties to maintain their common sense and avoid attempts to disrupt the poll process.

"We should resort to the law to settle all matters. Never do something that will sacrifice the public's interests," Suaidi told reporters on Wednesday.

South Sulawesi is not the only province that has failed to submit poll results to the General Elections Commission (KPU) on time.

In Central Sulawesi, the vote tabulation is still waiting on final results from Donggala regency. The regency has so far counted votes in only 10 of 18 subdistricts.

In spite of complaints from some parties of unsettled violations, Provincial Elections Committee chairman Basir Nurdin insisted that the count should go ahead. He promised to channel the complaints to local poll-monitoring committees.

The West Nusa Tenggara elections committee is also waiting for final results from Bima, Dompu and East Lombok regencies. North Sumatra, meanwhile, needs a few more days to complete the vote tabulation because Dairi regency has not submitted its tally.

The elections committee in Bima refused on Wednesday to endorse the election results because the regency's official poll watchdog had reported evidence of violations. The alleged offenses included intervention by some elections committee members in the vote counting at a polling station in Bolo subdistrict.

An elections committee spokesman, Umar Sirad, said he believed the province could produce a final vote tally by June 25.

Less than 10 provinces had submitted complete poll results to the KPU as of Tuesday.

West Java has almost wrapped up its count, with a complete tally for the province still waiting on Jatiuwung, a subdistrict of Tangerang, to repeat its ballot count on June 24.

The Tangerang elections committee upheld on Wednesday demands to repeat the count following the discovery that Golkar had managed to add 10,000 votes to an earlier tally of 27,000.

In West Sumatra, another province which has submitted a complete vote count, the Independent Election Monitoring Committee (KIPP) demanded that the provincial elections supervisory committee be disbanded for failing to achieve free and fair elections.

KIPP's provincial secretary-general, Akhmad Khoiruddin, criticized on Wednesday the official poll watchdog for its lack of initiative in coping with reports of election law violations. (27/28/30/38/40/41/49/amd)