Parties pile on pressure for total vote recount

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Seventeen of the 24 political parties contesting this year's legislative election are demanding the General Elections Commission (KPU) recount all ballots tallied electronically because they have had no way to monitor the process.

"We want a total recounting of ballots at the district level with the involvement of all political parties," Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) leader Hidayat Nurwahid said on Friday.

Emerging from a meeting with the leaders of the 16 other parties in Jakarta, Hidayat said the group wanted all the final results at polling-station level published in the mass media and on the internet to allow the public to scrutinize the numbers.

Almost 42 percent of votes have been counted out of a possible total of over 147 million voters as of Friday night, five days after the legislative election began.

Hidayat said the tranfer of data from the District Election Committees (PPKS) to the KPU computer system had not been witnessed by representatives from the political parties.

Election rules state only manual ballot counting, not computer counting, is to be supervised by political parties.

The meeting was attended by the Freedom Party leader Adi Sasono, the Socialist Democratic Labor Party (PBSD) head Muchtar Pakpahan and the Freedom Bull National Party (PNBK) leader Eros Djarot.

Hidayat said the 17 parties had refused to sign any document to validate ballot counting at the district level until the KPU resolved its IT ballot counting problem. The parties plan to submit the complaint to the KPU on Tuesday.

The 17 political parties include the Marhaenisme Indonesian Nationalist Party, the Socialist Democratic Labor Party (PBSD), the Freedom Party, the United Development Party (PPP), the United Democratic Nationhood Democrat Unity Party (PPDK), the New Indonesian Alliance Party (Partai PIB), the Freedom Bull National Party (PNBK), the Democratic Party, the Indonesian Justice and Unity Party (PKP Indonesia), the Indonesian Democratic Vanguard Party (PPDI), the National Mandate Party (PAN), the National Awakening Party (PKB), the PKS, Reform Star Party (PBR), the Pancasila Patriots' Party, the Indonesian Unity Party (PSI), and the Pioneers' Party.

The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and Golkar were among the seven parties that made no protest.

Expressing a similar sentiment but stopping short of demanding a recount, the Election Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu) has asked the KPU to be more transparent in its IT ballot counting.

Panwaslu head Komaruddin Hidayat said the counting was also marred by a weak data delivery network.

The public had no idea about the type of network used to deliver election results from the District Election Committees (PPK) to the KPU, he said.

Worse still, the counting process had not been audited by an independent body thus lowering the credibility of the system.

Komaruddin said the KPU should not use IT ballot counting to decide political parties' seats in the House of Representatives and other levels of government because it was invalid.

Panwaslu member Rozy Munir said the IT ballot counting could not project the number of seats obtained by political parties as such data did not appear in the vote tabulation.

Although a political party could win 500,000 votes nationwide, it might not get a seat in the House if it failed to meet the election dividing number, or BPP, in its electoral districts.

The BPP is a fraction of the number of voters who have exercise their rights in each electoral district over the total seats available in the district.

Meanwhile, in an impromptu speech on Thursday, President Megawati Soekarnoputri urged the people to accept the election results.

"It is natural for one party to get more votes than other parties," the President, who is also the PDI-P leader, said.

Glitches in the ballot counting should be accepted as this was the first direct election in the country, she said.

"Should some glitches occur, we should not become obsessed with them," she said.

On Wednesday, a local TV station reported 70 million votes had been counted nationwide before returning to a figure of 4.9 million several minutes later. The KPU said the network had made the error.