Struggle to complete vote count continues
JAKARTA (JP): The struggle to complete the vote count continued on Thursday with subdistrict elections committees still tallying ballots, as fatigue added to the burden of inexperienced committee officials.
In Bogor, West Java, as of Thursday the township elections committee had only received the vote count from eight of the 68 subdistrict committees, while the Bogor regency elections committee had received ballot results from eight of the 415 subdistrict committees.
The sluggishness of the count spurned the township elections committee to send a special team to check on the work of the district and subdistrict committees.
Township committee head Didi Wiardi said mistakes abounded in the reports received from the subdistricts. "Many of the figures in the documents do not match."
"This is probably because many of the elections committee workers stayed up all night," he said.
Didi said it would not be easy to change mistakes found in the reports. "All parties must attend the meeting and agree to any changes. This needs time. It is better that the counts are a bit late, but free and fair."
In Bogor township, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) was in the lead with 18,225 votes for the House of Representatives, followed by Golkar; while in Bogor regency, Golkar was leading with 91,132 votes for the House, trailed by PDI Perjuangan.
There was good news from Central Java where at least counting at subdistrict polling stations were completed.
Achmad Rofai, a provincial election committee member in charge of technical affairs, told Antara that all ballot boxes from 47,674 polling stations had been sent to district offices. Cross checking data would then take four days to complete and would reach the National Election Committee by June 17 after result reports were checked at the regional and provincial levels.
But Central Java's prosecutor's office has begun to check reports of violations including vote buying. Police chief Maj.Gen. Nurfaizi said there were 102 incidences since the campaign period apart from thousands of circulars discrediting parties up until poll day, which is prohibited.
In West Sumatra all regencies except Bukittinggi have sent their results to the provincial committee.
But in South Aceh, Aceh, 480 of 837 polling places have yet to report poll results to the regency elections committee, Antara reported on Thursday. This was because of delays in holding the polls in the volatile province.
The polls in six villages in the Kluet Utara district of South Aceh were delayed until Tuesday because of threats against poll officials.
In Irian Jaya, polls were also delayed in some areas. Jayawijaya regional elections committee chairman Demianus Djehaduk told The Jakarta Post on Thursday that ballots were even sent by plane to Kenyam district on polling day, he said, adding it would have taken at least two days for the ballots to arrive in the district had they been delivered by foot.
"It may be after June 20 before we are able to send in our results," Demianus said, adding he hoped the General Elections Commission understood their difficulties.
In Yogyakarta, only 70 percent of votes had reached the provincial committee. In case of a discrepancy of even one vote a visit to the concerned polling station would be needed, given the absence of telephones. On Thursday a special team was sent to Gunung Kidul regency to assist tallying.
In Maumere, East Nusa Tenggara, residents said they did not mind the slow vote count as long as the results were honest.
Former Golkar polling place chairman Wilem Beda said in past elections rapid vote counting was made possible by widespread fraud, usually to the benefit of Golkar.
In Sikka regency, Golkar protested because a blind woman who told a poll committee member she wanted to vote for Golkar was allegedly guided to vote for PDI Perjuangan. Someone who allegedly witnessed the episode reported the incident to the local Golkar office. The committee member denied the charge. (24/34/yac/har/anr/swa)