KPU ready to hold manual vote count
M. Taufiqurrahman, Jakarta
Thirty provinces have submitted their manual vote tally to the General Elections Commission (KPU), a commission official said.
The commission is planning to hold the manual count on Saturday (today) and announce the official result of the July 5 presidential election on Monday.
The official who wished to remain anonymous told The Jakarta Post that only the two new provinces of Gorontalo and West Irian Jaya had not sent the recapitulation of their count by Friday.
She said the Gorontalo Elections Commission (KPUD) had contacted the KPU to inform that they were on the way to Jakarta.
"One of its members has spoken to us over the phone and informed us that they were on their way to Jakarta. We believe they will make it today," she said.
Uncertainty, however, still hangs over the West Irian Jaya KPUD, which until Friday evening had not sent any message to the KPU.
"We haven't received any news from West Irian Jaya KPUD as to whether or not it will be ready to present the final result today," she said.
The KPU will announce the two presidential aspirants for the runoff, slated for Sept. 20 on Monday. The manual vote counting will be held at the Jakarta Convention Center (JCC) in Central Jakarta.
According to the electronic vote counting, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is leading the tally, with 33.57 percent of 106.8 million votes counted. Trailing behind him are Megawati Soekarnoputri with 26.27 percent, Wiranto 22.2 percent, Amien Rais 14.9 percent and Hamzah Haz 3 percent.
In the national manual tally slated for Saturday, representatives from provincial KPUDs will open forms bearing the number of votes garnered by each presidential candidate in the July 5 poll in front of all KPU members and witnesses sent by the campaign teams, the Election Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu) and independent poll observers.
Should there be complaints from witnesses about inconsistencies between the data they collected and that of the provincial KPUDs, the KPU must at once crosscheck the count based on the final count from the regental KPUDs.
The final result of the vote counting must be delivered to the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), the President, political parties or coalitions of political parties that nominated presidential candidates and the candidates themselves, within three days after the manual count.
If presidential candidates dispute the final tally, they can seek recourse with the Constitutional Court. Law No. 23/2003 on direct presidential elections stipulates that the court must deliver a verdict within 14 working days.
KPU deputy chairman Ramlan Surbakti said the manual vote count would be the only legitimate basis to determine the election result and presidential candidates could challenge the result based on data collected by their witnesses at the polling station level.
Citing widespread irregularities during and after the poll, Golkar Party's presidential candidate Wiranto may contest the result of the KPU manual vote count.