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.