Delays plague provincial ballot counts

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)