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.