Manual tabulation confirms Susilo's lead
Manual tabulation confirms Susilo's lead
Kurniawan Hari, Jakarta
The General Elections Commission (KPU) began on Saturday the
manual vote count for the presidential election, with Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono and running mate Jusuf Kalla still leading the
pack.
As of 5 p.m. on Saturday, front-runners Susilo and Kalla had
24,118,553 votes from 13 provinces, ahead of Megawati
Soekarnoputri and running mate Hasyim Muzadi with 20,411,438
votes.
Wiranto and running mate Solahuddin Wahid trailed in third
with 15,377,593 votes, followed by Amien Rais and Siswono
Yudohusodo with 11,418,495 votes, and Hamzah Haz and Agum Gumelar
with 2,224,323 votes.
The provisional results correspond with the computerized vote
count also done by the KPU.
According to the Elections Law, the official election results
will be based on the manual vote count.
The KPU will continue the manual count on Sunday and announce
the final results on Monday.
In the manual tabulation, representatives from the provincial
KPU offices opened forms displaying the number of votes garnered
by each presidential candidate in the July 5 presidential
election in front of KPU members, witnesses, Election Supervisory
Committee (Panwaslu) members and poll observers.
After reading the manual vote counts from each province,
witnesses representing each presidential candidate were allowed
to dispute or approve the counts.
Panwaslu members, however, were barred from making comments
during the tabulation.
The KPU opened the forms from 15 provinces, but delayed the
verification of the manual vote count in East Java and Riau
Islands provinces after finding flaws in the documents.
The manual vote counts from Aceh, North Sumatra, West Sumatra,
Riau, Jambi, South Sulawesi, Bengkulu, Lampung, Bangka Belitung,
Jakarta, Central Java, Yogyakarta and Banten were verified.
Witnesses representing Wiranto and Amien, however, refused to
sign the documents from all 13 of the provinces.
Berliana Kartakusumah, a witness for Wiranto, said his team
had found various problems in the tabulations.
He said a KPU circular declaring "double punctured" ballot
papers to be valid had caused confusion. Therefore, he said, the
KPU circular must be revoked and the ballots recounted.
A witness for Amien, Bambang Sudibyo, said his camp refused to
sign off on the manual vote counts in Aceh and West Sumatra,
which Amien won, due to inaccuracies in the tabulations.
He said the manual vote count done by a regional KPU office
resulted in 26,000 more votes than calculated by his team, but in
other districts the vote count was 50,000 votes lower than
expected.
"How can we sign off on the tabulations when we have found
various inaccuracies? The KPU seems to have ignored our data and
insists on asking us to approve the counts. Of course, we reject
it," he told The Jakarta Post.
He said his team realized Amien would not qualify for the
Sept. 20 runoff, but refusing to approve official results that
were considered flawed would teach the public an important
political lesson.
Commenting on the refusal of some of the witnesses to sign off
on the vote counts, KPU member Mulyana W. Kusumah said the counts
would remain valid.
He said the documents had been signed by witnesses at the
provincial and lower administrative levels.
"If witnesses at the provincial and district levels accepted
the vote tally, logically the witnesses at the national level
should also approve it," he said.
Responding to plans by the Wiranto camp to demand a judicial
review by the Supreme Court of the KPU circular on double
punctured ballots, Mulyana said it would not affect the manual
vote count process.