Counting continues, more areas hold rerun vote

Counting continues, more areas hold rerun vote

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Election workers across the country continued their struggle
with ballot counting in the legislative elections on Friday, with
tabulation in some areas two days behind schedule and further
reelections taking place.

Official results must be announced by the General Elections
Commission (KPU) by April 28 (not April 26 as reported) but as of
Friday several workers at subdistrict levels had not met their
Wednesday deadlines.

In Lampung in southern Sumatra, the East Lampung head of the
local KPU, Agus Alfian, said on Friday many of the subdistrict
and village election workers "didn't even know how to count the
votes" and admitted they had not received proper training.

By Wednesday, all results should have been sent to the
district election committees (PPK) but there were complications
in a number of areas, with computer trouble among the most common
reason given for the delays.

By April 12, the PPKs are supposed to have sent their results
to the regental/municipal offices (KPUD) of the KPU, to be
further verified and then delivered to the provincial offices.

The central KPU then must document all results sent from the
provinces, which it should receive by April 15, before the final
results are announced by April 28.

The KPU has not explicitly ruled whether the existing
schedule, which also includes the announcement of elected
candidates and the finalizing of the seat allocation for the
parties by April 30, applies to places where elections had been
repeated or delayed.

Election officers in Lampung, meanwhile, said difficulties
encountered included how to fill in the forms with the necessary
data -- the number of votes, spoilt votes and the numbers of
those who didn't vote.

The General Elections Commission (KPU) Lampung Province office
member Edwin Hanibal revealed that only 30 polling stations in 25
villages out of 2,220 stations from 228 villages had submitted
their reports to the KPU.

In North Sumatra, about 135 computers in the KPU offices were
reportedly damaged, Antara reported. Election workers resorted to
phoning data by telephone to the KPU.

Meanwhile, several areas conducted reelections on Friday
because of election violations. The elections were repeated after
protests from political parties.

The repeated elections were conducted at two polling stations
in the Prosia district, Kendari, Southeast Sulawesi as the ballot
papers, which should have be used in the Konawe regency, were
used in Kendari municipality. The reelection was conducted
following a consultation between the KPU Kendari office and
representatives of the 24 contesting political parties.

Separately, the KPU Bitung office in North Sulawesi decided on
Friday to conduct a reelection for regental council members due
to findings of violations on tallying in some polling stations.

The decision was made after 23 political parties, excluding
the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), protested
the results, alleging officers in some districts of manipulating
the data. Supporters of the protesting parties occupied the local
KPU office for almost seven hours on Thursday.

In Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, 23 parties, excluding Golkar,
demanded a repeated election because hundreds of ballot papers
were missing. The papers were later found in a sack in a room of
a district chief in Alak, Kupang after police questioned three
election officers.