Violation charges prolong end to ballot count

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)