Panwaslu warns about possible vote recount

Panwaslu warns about possible vote recount

Kurniawan Hari, Jakarta

The Election Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu) warned on Friday of
long delays in finalizing vote counting if the Supreme Court
declared invalid a General Elections Commission (KPU) circular on
double-punched ballot papers.

Panwaslu member Didik Supriyanto said a ruling against the
circular would force KPU to recount the votes.

"If the Supreme Court annuls the circular, there must be a
recount. The next question is whether it has enough time to do
the job," he told a discussion here.

The KPU is scheduled to announce the final result of the July
5 election on Monday, with the top-two polling candidates facing
each other in the Sept. 20 runoff.

The commission hastily issued a circular on July 5 declaring
valid double-punched ballots, which were considered invalid under
a previous circular.

However, many poll stations across the country, especially
those in the eastern parts of Indonesia, continued considering
the double-punched ballots invalid.

Gen. (ret) Wiranto and Amien Rais' campaign teams have
complained the election process was flawed and say they are
planning to ask the Supreme Court to review the legality of the
circular.

Based on the provisional results, Wiranto and Amien ranked
third and fourth respectively after Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and
Megawati Soekarnoputri.

Wiranto's team on Thursday named 15 flaws in the management of
the election, including the issuance of the KPU circular,
erroneous voter registrations, management's inability to stop
widespread vote buying and a veiled campaign during the cooling-
off period.

The team urged the KPU to revoke the circular and recount the
votes.

Separately, Golkar Party leader Akbar Tandjung said on Friday
he wanted to hear an explanation from Wiranto's campaign team
before deciding whether to support the move.

Icu Zulkafril, a member of Amien's campaign, said the KPU
circular had created problems. He said his team was considering
taking legal measures against the circular and the vote counting,
which he said was invalid.

Wiranto campaign team member Fahmi Idris, meanwhile, said the
team had been collecting evidence for its appeal to the
Constitutional Court.

Didik said while the KPU circular was erroneous, only the
Supreme Court would have final authority to decide whether it was
illegal or invalidated the vote counting.

The Supreme Court can issue a ruling only after presidential
candidates request a judicial review.

Didik called for the KPU to explain the whereabouts of the
remainder of the ballot papers. There were likely to be ballots
left over because the KPU had ordered the printing of the papers
before it knew exactly how many registered voters there were, he
said.

Meanwhile, information technology analyst Roy Suryo criticized
the low quality of the IT system the KPU had developed, saying
the system was open to manipulation.

It would have been easy for the system's computer operators to
change the result of the tally during the data-entry process, Roy
said.

Roy suggested the KPU should publish a written result with
data from all polling stations on the Internet. KPU officials
could easily use scanners to make them publishable on the
commission's website, he said.