Holiday prevents Papuans from voting
Holiday prevents Papuans from voting
Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The General Elections Commission (KPU) said on Friday that of the
1,100 polling stations in the country that must hold delayed
elections or rerun voting, just 50 percent have done so thus far.
It said the 1,100 polling stations -- of a total of 585,000
nationwide -- that were unable to hold elections on April 5 were
from 16 provinces, including Jakarta, North Sumatra, West
Sumatra, Papua and East Java.
Deputy KPU chairman Ramlan Surbakti quoted his colleague
Chusnul Mar'iyah as saying that 700 of the polling stations were
located in the country's easternmost province of Papua.
He added that the Papua KPUD had sent a letter to his office
in Jakarta, saying that some polling stations there could not
hold delayed elections on Friday as most voters were observing
Good Friday.
Ramlan admitted that the KPU made a mistake when it set April
9 as the deadline for regions to finish holding delayed
elections.
Many remote areas including those in Papua, Aceh and East Nusa
Tenggara had to delay elections on April 5 due to a lack of
ballot papers.
At the same time, some other regions had to hold rerun
elections following disruptions in delivering ballot papers that
were accidentally interchanged with those in other areas.
Under prevailing rules, delayed elections must be held before
April 26 at the latest, or within 20 days of the scheduled
election day.
In Southeast Sulawesi, at least two polling stations in
Anggoeya neighborhood, Poasia subdistrict, Kendari, held rerun
elections on Friday.
The revote followed a protest by political parties after
several polling stations were given the wrong ballot papers for
their voting district on Monday.
"It is because of the mistake in the distribution of ballot
papers for Kendari and Konowe regency," Kendari's KPUD chairman
Tumbo Saranani said.
The rerun was approved by all 24 parties in Kendari and ran
smoothly amid a high turnout and tight security, he added.
A rerun election was also held in the town of Bitung, some 40
kilometers from the North Sulawesi capital of Manado, after
thousands of protesters and local political parties demanded a
revote due to alleged manipulation in the tallying of their
ballots.
The demonstrators earlier had occupied the Bitung branch
office of the KPU to demand a revote.
During the rerun, voters only punched ballot papers for
legislative candidates for Bitung, said local KPUD chairman
Sondakh.
Meanwhile, in East Nusa Tenggara, hundreds of ballot papers
had reportedly gone missing from their ballot boxes stored at the
Alak subdistrict head's office in the provincial capital of
Kupang.
Oddly, the ballot papers in question were later found in a bag
inside the same office by local residents and police officers.