Counting Jakarta expected to finish today
Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPUD) officials expect to complete the electronic ballot counting for Jakarta on Monday morning, while the manual counting would probably be ready to be made public on Wednesday.
"The manual counting is already at the provincial level so it will probably be finished soon," KPUD chairman Mohamad Taufik told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
Taufik also explained that there were no serious difficulties experienced by the poll commission in processing the data.
However, he acknowledged that the slow process was caused by the use of separate forms to record data by the polling stations organizing committees.
Approaching the deadline, about 80 percent of some six million ballots had been counted as of Sunday at 7 p.m., the seventh day after the April 5 legislative election.
The number of ballots differed from the number of registered eligible voters, which reached 6,478,005 as recorded by the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) during the registration period.
The KPUD have finished counting about 4.28 million ballots for the DPR and DPRD and another 4.17 million ballots for a new body called the Regional Representatives Council (DPD).
The Prosperous and Justice Party (PKS) and the Democratic Party held the first and second place with 975,541 votes and 899,752 votes respectively as of Sunday evening for the House of Representatives (DPR) ballot counting in Jakarta.
Although the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and the Golkar Party ruled nationwide, they only managed to secure third and fourth places with 576,046 votes and 355,749 votes in the capital.
A similar pattern is also seen in the latest tally result for the Jakarta City Council (DPRD) on Sunday evening. The PKS and the Democratic Party secured the first and second place with 886,141 votes and 774,808 votes respectively.
Both parties have significant number of voters compared to the 22 other political parties that contested the general elections, as the next closest is PDI-P with 517,045 votes.
From the six million votes, the parties are vying for the 75 seats in the DPRD. At present the projected number of seats will be between 15 and 18 for the Democratic Party and between 17 and 20 for the PKS, followed by the PDI-P with at least 10 seats.
Meanwhile, the result of DPD ballot counting still places cosmetics queen Mooryati Soedibyo in first place with 435,269 votes, closely followed by former minister Sarwono Kusumaatmadja with 425,227 votes.
The son of Betawi (native Jakartan) comedian and actor Biem Triani Benyamin, remains in third place with 335,601 votes. The fourth place is between Marwan Batubara and Bambang Warih Koesoema, with 294,646 votes and 276,458 votes respectively.
On Saturday, 21 political parties had demanded the General Elections Commission (KPU) recount all ballots tallied electronically, as the parties were not involved in monitoring the counting process.
Since then, three more political parties have given their support to the recount, with only the PDI-P, the Golkar Party, the Democratic Party, and the Crescent and Star Party (PBB) supporting the electronic vote counting.
The Election Law stipulates that the result of the manual ballot counting is valid.
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