Golkar party enjoys comfortable lead in vote count

Golkar party enjoys comfortable lead in vote count

M. Taufiqurrahman
The Jakarta Post
Jakarta

Having taken a slim lead in the vote count from the April 5
legislative election over the past five days, the Golkar Party
now enjoys a comfortable margin as the top vote getter.

As of 11 p.m. on Friday night, Golkar had 21.02 percent of the
89,572,300 votes counted, while President Megawati
Soekarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P)
was lagging behind with 19.62 percent.

Golkar's lead, however, comes as no surprise because long
before the April 5 legislative election, scores of opinion polls
showed the party of former president Soeharto's New Order regime
winning the elections, especially outside of Java and in the
eastern region of the country.

If the vote count continues in this direction, the PDI-P could
end with less than 20 percent of the vote, a dramatic slump from
its 34 percent gain in the 1999 elections.

Election study groups have estimated that 87 percent of over
147 million registered voters cast their ballots on April 5.

The Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPUD) said earlier
that in the capital, 4,542,726 people voted, or about 75 percent
of the approximately six million registered voters.

There was no change in the positions of the other political
parties in the ballot count.

The party of former president Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid, the
National Awakening Party (PKB), stands in third with 12.04
percent of the vote, ahead of the United Development Party (PPP)
in fourth position with 8.28 percent.

Two upstarts, the Democratic Party and the Prosperous Justice
Party (PKS) remained in the fifth and sixth positions,
respectively. However, the Democratic Party has begun to inch
away from the sixth-placed party with 7.52 percent of the vote,
compared to 7.14 percent for the PKS.

The political vehicle of People's Consultative Assembly
Speaker Amien Rais, the National Mandate Party (PAN), stands in
seventh place with 6.47 percent of the vote.

Commenting on the vote tally, which has moved at a snail's
pace over the past three days, the chief expert of the General
Elections Commission (KPU)'s IT division, Akhiar Oemry, said
there were no technical problems at the commission's data center.

"We have received no information about disruptions in our
system. The problems are resulting from sluggish data entry by
election commissions at the subdistrict level (PPK)," he told The
Jakarta Post in a telephone interview.

He said officials at some PPKs preferred to enter the data
only after all of the ballots from the polling stations had been
collected.

"This backlog is the chief reason why we have seen no progress
in the tally in the last few days," he said.

Oemry said there was nothing the KPU could do about the
backlog because there were no rules regarding the pace of data
entry.

"We have issued circulars on how to speed up the data entry.
However, it was of little use because the PPK officials did not
heed the order."

Oemry dismissed the possibility that the backlog was an
attempt by PPK officials to manipulate the ballot count.