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.