Request for repolling must be lawful: KPU

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)