Election reruns urged in 499 stations
Moch. N. Kurniawan and M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
A rerun of elections needed to be held in 499 polling stations nationwide because of electoral law violations and other irregularities, the Election Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu) said on Monday.
Committee official Didik Supriyanto said violations found at those polling stations included unregistered voters casting votes, voters punching ballot papers twice, polling station committee members punching ballots, voters forging voting cards and ballot-counting manipulation.
According to Didik, 105 of the 499 polling stations had already held new votes as recommended by the committee.
The provinces worst affected were Papua, needing 201 new elections; followed by East Java, with 68 polling stations; and Maluku and North Maluku with 31 polling station each.
Only Aceh, Bengkulu, Lampung, West Java, Bali and Central Kalimantan provinces recorded no violations.
"The KPU still has time to hold new elections until April 25 in these (recommended) polling stations," Didik said.
The KPU had said earlier that April 5 would be the last day of new elections because of administrative constraints.
It erected a total of 585,218 polling stations across the country for the April 5 legislative election, participated in by 24 political parties. Over 147 million people registered for the election but the number of people who actually voted remains unknown.
Didik said besides recommending new elections Panwaslu had also ordered vote recounts at 1,855 polling stations, including 673 in East Java and 332 in Riau.
Another Panwaslu member Rozy Munir said while the number of polling stations that had to hold new elections was small, the problem could cause further disruptions to the election process.
"The level of problems in some of those polling stations are serious," he said.
Panwaslu chairman Komaruddin Hidayat had encouraged political parties to submit evidence of violations at polling stations on April 5.
He also called on the KPU and law enforcement agencies to punish those who committed violations during the election.
Nineteen political parties led by former president Abdurrahman Wahid had earlier called on the KPU to hold a nationwide rerun of elections. They later withdrew this demand and sought a ballot recount instead.
Meanwhile, Golkar leader and House Speaker Akbar Tandjung on Monday called on the KPU to rectify its past mistakes dealing with voter registrations by requiring the participation of community leaders in registering voters for the direct presidential election on July 5.
"To provide more accurate and reliable data for the presidential election, we expect the KPU to involve heads of communities and neighborhood units in future voter registrations," Akbar said in his speech marking the opening of the House session on Monday.
Akbar said flaws in the voter registration system had caused a great number of eligible voters to lose their constitutional rights.
"We deplore the fact many eligible voters were denied from voting in the legislative election due to the poor performance of workers employed by the Central Statistics Agency," he said.
However, Akbar said the April 5 legislative election had proceeded peacefully, despite all the glitches.
"We commend the public for playing an indispensable role in creating peaceful conditions during the poll," he said.