Violation charges prolong end to ballot count

JAKARTA (JP): Many harried provincial elections committees have moved back the completion of their vote counts from June 17 deadline to June 21, citing technical complications or controversy over alleged violations.

Tiny but troubled East Timor is one of only a few provinces to finish the vote count on time, although protests lodged by Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan) marred the approval of the results.

Chairman of the East Timor election committee Gaspar Sarmento was quoted by Antara as saying on Friday that the results were final. He said the committee would relay PDI Perjuangan's complaint to the General Elections Commission (KPU).

Election committees in Central Java, East Java, South Sulawesi, East Nusa Tenggara and Maluku attributed their failure to beat the deadline to irregularities before and during the June 7 polls.

In North Sumatra and West Java, the complete vote count is expected to take place on Saturday because most regency and mayoralty polling committees have yet to submit their reports.

The East Nusa Tenggara polling committee upheld on Thursday the demand by 20 branches of parties registered in the province that balloting in South Central Timor regency be reheld due to violations blamed on the ruling Golkar Party. A fact-finding team of five deployed to the regency capital of SoE by the committee found evidence that Golkar used bureaucratic channels to prevent people from exercising their right to vote.

"It's up to the election supervisory committee to decide whether the poll should be reheld in all polling stations across the regency or only in places where violations were spotted," chairman of East Nusa Tenggara election committee Chris Boro Tokan said.

He said the committee also recommended that the official poll watchdog disqualify Golkar and take the culprits to court.

The Maluku election committee will only start its vote count on Monday next week, pending reports from a special team sent to North Maluku regency to verify reports of the involvement of civil servants to assure a Golkar win.

The ruling party notched a landslide win, with more than 111,000 votes in North Maluku, amid swirling allegations raised by 20 parties that the bureaucracy was behind cheating found before and on the election day. The protesting parties said they found district chiefs campaigned for Golkar, warned people against voting for parties other than Golkar and encouraged vote rigging. They also protested the Ternate sultan, who issued a letter asking people to support Golkar.

When the parties agreed to reject the polls, the regency polling committee joined them.

Deputy chairman of Maluku election committee John Lokollo led the team of three assigned to probe the allegations.

Chairman of Maluku election supervisory body Arbani played down the regency election committee's rejection, saying the decision was taken without consulting the official poll watchdog.

"The protesters must specify what kind of violations they found and they cannot reject the overall results of the polls because of offenses in certain places," Arbani said.

As of Friday, the East Java election committee received poll results in 11 of 37 regencies and mayoralties across the province.

A member of the provincial election committee, Amin Soeharto of the Masyumi Party, said irregularities were spotted in six of the submitted polls reports. They ranged from unsigned poll results in subdistricts to stained report papers.

There also were discrepancies between the figures of votes compiled by the regency election committee and the counts of individual parties.

The Central Java election committee interrupted the count on Friday after finding over 100,000 extra ballots. Deputy chairman of the committee, Daromi Irdjas, said the extra votes came from at least six regencies, including Boyolali, Salatiga and Karanganyar.

A special team has been sent to the regencies to investigate whether multiple voting by individuals occurred.

But Daromi dismissed the allegations as premature. "I suspect overballoting occurred because we easily accepted requests for more ballot papers from regency election committees," he said.

The KPU provided provincial election committees with reserve ballot papers due to fears that many papers were damaged or substandard.

Also on Friday, a group of minor parties dropped their threat not to endorse the poll results. They acquiesced after hearing that the provincial election committee promised to back their demand that KPU lift a ruling requiring a party to win at least 2 percent of the vote to qualify for the next polls.

In Ujungpandang, a group of parties declared on Friday they rejected the "cheating-riddled" polls and asked the KPU to order a reholding of the vote in 10 regencies in South Sulawesi.

Secretary of the provincial election committee Junus Dekeng said the protest meant related regency polling committees lacked minimum number of votes to endorse the poll results. The regencies include Pangkep, North Luhu, South Luhu, Majene, Gowa, Mamuju and Polmas.

"The protest has played havoc with the vote count, but we expect the problem will be resolved as soon as our fact-finding team finishes its job in the problematic areas," Junus said.

The vote count in Yogyakarta also is tardy because the local election committee is verifying poll results in some districts. Chairman of the committee Nur Achmad Affandi said the verification was needed after it was found that National Mandate Party (PAN) received about 200 extra votes when PDI Perjuangan lost approximately the same number of ballots. (30/40/43/44/48/nur/har/amd)