Tue, 27 Apr 2004

JP/2/tally

Moch. N. Kurniawan Jakarta

Two days before the General Elections Commission (KPU) announces the final tally of the legislative election, the commission has so far completed manual vote counting in only 21 of 69 electoral districts in the April 5 poll.

KPU member Rusadi Kantaprawira, chairman of the manual ballot count, said on Monday that the commission managed to finish manual counting in only 15 electoral districts since Saturday.

The commission had finished counting in six districts by Friday.

All nine KPU members attended the plenary session, but several parties did not send witnesses to the meeting including the Reform Star Party (PBR) and Freedom Party.

The KPU has planned to announce the results on April 28.

As of Monday, a total 36,762,450 votes had been manually counted, with the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) garnering the most votes with 9,308,022 votes, followed by the Golkar Party with 6,465,861 votes, the National Awakening Party (PKB) with 5,843,478 votes the United Development Party (PPP) with 2,780,462 votes and the Democratic Party with 2,702,656.

Under a simple calculation for distribution of House seat, 163 of 550 seats should have been distributed to political parties, with PDI-P in top position with 45 seats, followed by Golkar with 30, the PKB 25, PPP and Democrat Party 17 each, the National Mandate Party (PAN) 14 and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) with 11 seats.

The seat distribution is calculated by dividing legitimated votes obtained by parties by the election dividing number (BPP) in each electoral district. The BPP in an electoral district is obtained from the division of the total legitimated votes by seat allocation in an electoral district.

The KPU had planned originally to complete all manual counting by Sunday (April 25), but the plan was not fulfilled due to time- consuming ballot counting in regencies/municipalities, slow delivery of results to the KPU and recounting.

On Tuesday, the recapitulation of manual ballot counting will be carried out in seven electoral districts including West Java I, II, Central Java IV, IX, and Gorontalo.