Recounting in Central, East Jakarta completed
JAKARTA (JP): The Provincial Elections Committee here announced on Monday that the ballot recounting process in Central and East Jakarta has been completed.
Muchammad Taufik, chairman of the committee's program division, said on Monday that the local mayoralty election committees had declared the re-count complete after making several necessary corrections based on their findings of violations.
"We're now waiting for their reports," he said.
The committees in the city's three other mayoralties will start the recounting process beginning on Tuesday, Taufik added, without saying how long this would take.
The Jakarta Provincial Elections Committee last Friday instructed all district polling committees in the capital to recount ballot papers because of irregularities in the initial tallying.
The following day, Taufik abruptly corrected the decision by saying that the choice of recounting mechanism was the responsibility of each district committee, meaning they could either reopen boxes and count all ballot papers again, or simply check the tally against earlier documented counts.
However, when asked for confirmation of the completion of the tally, a member of the East Jakarta poll committee, Dadang Iskandar, insisted that the recounting process in the mayoralty was not yet finished.
"We still need to recheck and recount as well the ballots from three of the 10 district committees here. I think we will only complete the process tomorrow," Dadang told The Jakarta Post late Monday.
According to him, most of the irregularities reported in the mayoralty were discrepancies between different ballot tallies at different levels.
"The irregularities were mostly caused by errors of people, who have been burdened by heavy workloads, and not because of political reasons," Dadang said.
Taufik also revealed that the provincial elections committee has found irregularities at almost all subdistricts and districts in South Jakarta.
He showed reporters some of the reports of vote discrepancies, such as those found in the subdistricts of Gandaria Utara, Rawa Barat, Cipete Utara, Selong and Cilandak Barat.
Taufik's remarks sparked anger from the local committee members.
The chairman of the Central Jakarta mayoralty elections committee, M. Mukson, criticized the provincial committee as being too reactive in making statements.
"I think they're always too fast to make remarks or decisions," he said, saying that the provincial committee only made things more complicated.
Mukson suggested that Taufik and his colleagues "shut their mouths tightly" to allow the local committee members to complete their work.(ind)