Mega yet to concede defeat
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The incumbent president, Megawati Soekarnoputri, urged on Tuesday the people of Indonesia to accept whoever officially won the direct presidential election, but did not concede defeat to rival Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who swept up the majority of votes.
Megawati's camp is contesting the results announced by the General Elections Commission, which confirmed on Monday that Susilo won by a landslide with 60.68 percent of the vote.
"Whoever is elected must be accepted because the true victory belongs to us all ... a victory that we should be proud of," Megawati said in her address to mark the commemoration of the Indonesian Military's (TNI) 59th anniversary.
She struggled to hold back tears at the ceremony held at Halim Perdanakusumah air base in East Jakarta in her first speech following the General Elections Commission (KPU) announcement.
Meanwhile, congratulations poured in from various parts of the world for president-elect Susilo, who also attended the TNI anniversary. The former chief security minister in Megawati's Cabinet sat in the second row among the guests along with another rival in the presidential race, Gen. (ret) Wiranto, and other former TNI chiefs.
In Susilo's first official statement later in the day following the announcement of the election result, he said, "I am very impressed with these spontaneous greetings coming from my counterparts, which shows us that the general election in Indonesia came under the international spotlight.
"All the well-wishers congratulated me for the success of the elections and also expressed great expectations for the developing of bilateral relations between our country and theirs.
"Such attention has given me and my administration -- God willing, it will start working on Oct. 20 -- to enhance cooperation with them for the sake of our national interests," Susilo stated.
At the air base, Megawati also said that the pairs of candidates must be equally ready to lose as they were to win.
"We have to show the world that our nation is a great nation and one of noble ethics. We may have different choices, but we have a single goal ... to be a respected country," she said.
A confidant of Susilo, Maj. Gen. (ret) Djali Jusuf, said Susilo would likely deliver his acceptance speech after the Constitutional Court completed hearing complaints from the losing candidate later this week.
The court has given the two camps three days to file election complaints and will hear cases only if the outcome is likely to significantly affect the final vote result.
However, the Megawati camp's plan to bring the election result to court had yet to materialize on Wednesday. Megawati won only in the provinces of Bali, East Nusa Tenggara and Maluku out of the country's 32 provinces.
The head of Megawati's legal team, Gayus Lumbun, said his team was mulling over whether to challenge the election result. "We are still gathering evidence to support our claim," he said. A colleague in the legal team said a decision may be made on Wednesday after they meet with Megawati.
Gayus said that thus far his team had found that alleged vote rigging had occurred in polling stations in the vicinity of Susilo's private residence in Cikeas, Bogor regency.
Another representative of the Megawati-Hasyim Muzadi campaign team had also cited among others findings that there were more than the legal maximum of 300 voters at a number of polling stations in 12 provinces.
In a plenary meeting held by the General Elections Commission to announce the election result, Megawati's team declined to sign the official result for West Java province.