Polls may be reheld in several areas in the city

Polls may be reheld in several areas in the city

JAKARTA (JP): The Jakarta Provincial Elections Committee will
decide on Thursday whether to repeat the polls in places where
violations were found, committee chairman Djafar Badjeber said on
Tuesday.

Djafar said a decision to repeat the polls would be taken if
vote discrepancies could not be settled after completion of the
ballot recount.

"The Election Law allows such a repetition. Moreover, the
Jakarta Election Supervisory Committee has confirmed that they
will support our steps as long as the violations are
significant," he said after meeting with representatives of the
supervisory committee at the provincial committee office in
Central Jakarta.

He said the provincial committee was still waiting for reports
from mayoralty committees where the ballots were being recounted.

The provincial committee instructed the district elections
committees last week to recount the ballots, or check the tally
against earlier documented counts, after scores of violations in
the results were discovered.

The provincial committee revised a previous instruction which
said that ballot recounting would be held in all districts, by
saying that a recount would be held only in places where
violations occurred.

Vote discrepancies were mainly detected in tabulation report
documents from polling place committees, which differed from data
released by subdistrict or district polling committees.

Many observers, including committee officials, believed the
discrepancies were mainly the result of human error, as officials
in charge of ballot counting were exhausted due to their day-and-
night workload.

However, a representative of Jakarta chapters of 32 minor
parties which demanded the recount, Ganda Hutabarat, said there
were indications of political motives behind the violations.

"How can we say that the violations are merely due to human
errors if the vote discrepancies reach thousands of votes," he
said.

As of Tuesday, there was no significant progress in the
recount process. Only the Central Jakarta committee had completed
the task.

The recount was principally demanded by the 32 parties said to
be disappointed by their poor showing in the polls.

Muhammad Taufik, a representative of the grouping, said
executives of all 32 parties would hold a meeting late Tuesday to
consolidate the relationship.

However, a source at the provincial committee said the
meeting's agenda would also lead to discussion about further
action, including the possibility of refusing to sign the
official poll results released by the provincial committee.

Separately, chairman of South Jakarta mayoralty committee
Sambudi Bakri said recounting would only start on Wednesday.

"We found vote discrepancies at nearly 60 percent of 2,347
voting places in South Jakarta," he said.(ind)