Jakarta recount protested by polling officials

JAKARTA (JP): Several district polling committee officials raised objections on Sunday concerning the decision of the Jakarta Provincial Elections Committee to re-count ballot papers due to indications of serious mistakes in tallying.

Some district polling committees said they would oppose the decision and leave the re-counting to senior officials in mayoralty or provincial committees.

"There are no significant errors here and no political parties' representatives uttered any objections, chairman of East Jakarta's Pasar Rebo district polling committee Rafles Ma'as told The Jakarta Post.

"So why should we re-count the ballots?" he asked.

On Friday, an executive of the Provincial Elections Committee announced that because many discrepancies had been found all ballot papers should be re-counted, which could reach some four million papers. Thirty-two city chapters of political parties said they would demand that the poll in Jakarta be repeated if differences in tallying could not be settled soon.

Head of the provincial committee's program division Muchammad Taufik has said all ballot papers should be re-counted, but on Sunday he said the mechanism would be up to district polling committees. This would mean they would either reopen and re-count ballot papers or only check tallying based on documents.

Rafles said that if the provincial committee insisted on a decision, district polling committee members were willing to become witnesses only.

"I don't want to waste time. The provincial committee should take into consideration that district committee members are exhausted after working day and night even since before the poll, that some have even sacrificed their jobs," Rafles said.

Discrepancies in tallying should, as a rule, be accepted by all committee members as they include political parties contesting the polls.

Rafles, who owns a small cookie business, said, however, that he was willing to work another two weeks. If the tallying at the district level was still questioned after that, he said he would resign from his chairmanship.

"I must think of my family; my business has been in a mess since more than two weeks ago and I still have to pay my five workers, which amounts to Rp 30,000 a day, while I'm not getting any income," Rafles said. The father of seven said he had even had his cellular phone temporarily cut off to cut expenses.

Guntur Alamsyah, secretary of the Duren Sawit Elections Committee in East Jakarta, also said re-counting should only affect places where vote discrepancies occurred.

"Of course we object to the decision because the tallying is completed; there were differences found at a Pondok Bambu polling place but they have settled the problem themselves."

Guntur added that the decision shows that the provincial committee did not trust the work of the 43 district committees.

"We have done the best we could for the sake of a better political life, but we have not received mutual respect (of the provincial committee)," he said.

Guntur said he did not want to complain, but the honorarium for a chairman of a district committee was "far from decent" at Rp 40,000 until the project finished; a deputy chairman received Rp 35,000; a secretary Rp 30,000, a deputy secretary Rp 25,000 while committee members received Rp 20,000 each.

However, South Jakarta Mayoralty Elections Committee chairman Sambudi Bakri told the Post that a re-count should be held because discrepancies and violations were found at almost all voting places in his area.

"We will re-count the ballot tomorrow (Monday) with or without the agreement of district committees. We should question them if they are reluctant (to re-count the ballots)," he said.

As of Sunday, the mechanism of the re-counting process was still confusing. In South Jakarta, officials said re-counting would be held by each district committee, but in Central Jakarta the process would be by the mayoralty elections committee.

Central Jakarta committee chairman M. Mukson said he had instructed all district committees to send the ballot boxes to the mayoralty committee office.

"The re-counting will only be for districts where discrepancies and violations were found," he told the Post, adding that this was in line with instructions from provincial committee chairman Djafar Badjeber.(ind)