Delays plague provincial ballot counts

JAKARTA (JP): Postponement remained the order of the day in the provincial ballot counts on Monday, leaving the schedule for the national vote count undecided.

North Sumatra finished its vote tally on Sunday, bringing the number of provinces which have submitted poll results to the General Elections Commission (KPU) to nine.

With most of the country's 27 provinces failing to meet the original June 17 deadline for submitting their elections results to the KPU, commission deputy chairman Adnan Buyung Nasution announced on Monday the commission had called a plenary meeting for Thursday to decide when the national ballot count would begin.

"Despite the sluggish process of the count, we are optimistic that final poll results will be announced on July 8 as scheduled," Nasution said.

The commission has considered a gradual national vote count using a first-in-first-out basis if the provinces are unable to submit their poll results by the new deadline which will be established by the KPU after its plenary session.

The executive director of the Rectors Forum, one of three internationally recognized domestic poll watchdogs, Sudjana Sapi'ie, doubted that technical difficulties were behind the slow pace of the vote count.

"We found in Bandung there was no data entry between June 12 and June 17 at the branches of BNI and BRI state banks. Computer operators there did nothing," Sudjana said in Bandung on Monday.

The KPU accesses tabulated votes in regencies across the country from the computer networks of both Bank BNI and Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI).

The North Sumatra Elections Committee wrapped up on Sunday evening the tabulation of votes cast in the June 7 polls in the province's 19 regencies and mayoralties.

Representatives of all parties registered in the province and poll witnesses endorsed the poll results, which saw the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) finish first with 2,052,680 votes for the House of Representatives. Golkar came in a distant second with 1,128,338 votes, followed by the United Development Party (PPP) with 520,067 votes.

PDI Perjuangan secured an estimated nine of the province's 24 seats in the House, while Golkar will receive five and PPP two.

Apart from North Sumatra, provincial vote counts were marred by controversy.

Representatives of 37 political parties in West Java threatened to reject the polls, citing unresolved irregularities which occurred before and after election day. The provincial electoral committee finished its vote count last week, but the results have not yet been endorsed.

"How can we endorse the poll results if we were not involved in the vote count," Asep Saefullah of the Muslim Community Awakening Party (PKU) said.

However, elections witnesses in the province endorsed the results on Monday.

Asep said the political party representatives on the elections committee were not involved in the committee's decision making process. He also said he suspected this exclusion led to corruption among committee leaders.

The 37 party representatives also demanded the KPU fire the secretary of the provincial elections committee, Istomo Gatot, who they charged with nontransparent management.

"Is it tolerable to keep the committee's money in a personal bank account," Asep asked of Istomo.

Efforts to complete the ballot count in South Kalimantan and West Nusa Tenggara also faltered on Monday.

The West Nusa Tenggara Elections Committee is waiting for regency-level elections committees in Dompu and Bima to submit their poll results. While the Dompu committee cited technical difficulties for the delay, the committee in Bima blamed unsettled allegations of elections fraud for its failure to endorse the poll results.

From the South Kalimantan capital of Banjarmasin, Antara reported the provincial vote count could only begin after the provincial elections committee received poll results from Tapin regency.

Committee secretary Bambang Rachmadi said on Monday the elections committee in Tapin recounted votes in the regency in response to a protest lodged by 19 of the 23 members on the elections committee there.

Separately, the South Sulawesi office of the Independent Elections Monitoring Committee said over 9,800 elections law violations occurred in the province.

Office chairman Nasiruddin Pasigai said the untimely opening of polling stations topped the list of violations with 1,831 cases, followed by 1,362 cases of stand-in voting and 620 cases of people who did not have their fingers marked with indelible ink after casting their ballots. (37/39/43/49/rms/amd)