Request for repolling must be lawful: KPU

JAKARTA (JP): Amid a flood of demands that polls be rerun in several regions across the country, the General Elections Commission insisted on Monday that such requests should first meet all legal requirements.

The commission's deputy chairman, Adnan Buyung Nasution, told reporters on Monday that any political party could request a repeat of the polls in any region if they found irregularities.

Such demands have also come from private poll watchers.

"Provincial or regency-level election committees must secure approval from the local election supervisory committee and the local administration," Nasution said, quoting article 76 of the 1999 electoral law.

While anticipating increasing demands to repeat polls, he said the General Elections Commission (KPU) is considering establishing a "special commission" to settle alleged violations.

Nasution said the KPU is also considering a deadline for filing complaints about poll irregularities, before the scheduled final tallying for the provincial legislative bodies at the provincial elections committees.

Meanwhile, the KPU is also racing with time to reveal the official final poll results. It set June 21 for the final tallying of results at the National Elections Committee.

Much criticism and speculation has arisen over the slower than expected provisional results, as barely 40 percent of some 117 million votes were tallied by late Monday.

As of 11 p.m., PDI Perjuangan remained on top of the table issued by the General Elections Commission with 15,125,520 votes for the House of Representatives, 15,094,770 for provincial legislatures (DPRD I) and 13,961,830 for regency or mayoralty candidates (DPRD II).

The party was the front runner in 14 provinces: North Sumatra, Riau, South Sumatra, Lampung, all Java's five provinces except East Java, all Kalimantan's four provinces except South Kalimantan, Bali, West and East Nusa Tenggara.

Second was the National Awakening Party, which showed supremacy in East Java, with 7,590,485 (House), 7,621,325 (DPRD I) and 7,523,176 (DPRD II). Ruling party Golkar was third with 6,622,268 (House), 6,596,723 (DPRD I) and 6,296,897 (DPRD II), thanks to its dominance in Sulawesi.

An unofficial count of the votes conducted by the UNDP-funded Joint Operations Media Center (JOMC) also put PDI Perjuangan ahead of the rest of the parties. Differing from the KPU tally, Golkar was second, with PKB third.

The JOMC projected that PDI Perjuangan had so far earned 141 out of 462 House seats up for grabs. Golkar secured 97 and PKB 37. As of Monday, only seven of 48 parties contesting the June 7 polls had clinched House seats.

The Independent Election Monitoring Committee (KIPP) said on Sunday that demands to repeat the polls have been voiced in 46 regencies in 12 provinces, and that more are expected.

Some 200 supporters of the Indonesian People's Party (PARI) and 300 activists of the Democratic People's Party (PRD) separately held protests outside the KPU's secretariat on Monday, demanding the polls be repeated nationwide.

The decision to organize a repeat election in Jakarta is under intensive discussion at the National Elections Committee, chairman Jacob Tobing said, following the start of the recounting of ballots in the capital.

On reported plans to hold a second poll in North Sulawesi based on suspicions of foul play, a member of the official Election Supervisory Committee, Ramlan Surbakti, said provincial or regency-level election committees could only make such a decision after the supervisory committee investigated alleged violations.

Electoral law

Ramlan said the decision of North Sulawesi's provincial committee had violated the 1999 electoral law and a related government regulation.

Article 33 of the regulation stipulates that complaints on alleged foul play should be made in writing to the General Elections Commission and the supervisory committee.

"What happened in North Sulawesi was that the provincial elections committee conducted its own investigation and then decided, through a voting process, to repeat the polls," Ramlan said.

The North Sulawesi Election Supervisory Committee said in a statement on Monday that it had not been informed by the local election committee that the June 7 polls had been annulled and would be held again.

Ramlan said he would go to the province, together with fellow committee members Rosita S. Noor and Todung Mulya Lubis, on Tuesday to settle the matter.

On plans to hold the polls in the troubled Aceh regencies of North Aceh, East Aceh and Pidie, Jacob said separately that representatives of the Aceh Provincial Elections Committee had proposed that the repeated polls be held between June 19 and June 27.

"Considering that more than 50 percent of Acehnese live in those three provinces, the General Elections Committee is seriously considering the proposal," Jacob said. The local elections committee had canceled the initially planned vote extension days of June 19 to June 20 for security reasons. (imn/byg/ylt/amd)