Counting continues after Indonesia's national elections in the world's third largest democracy. The remote province of Papua, formerly known as Irian Jaya, was the first place to vote in the Indonesian archipelago, which covers three time zones. However, Papua's remoteness has thrown up some challenges for local authorities.

Presenter/Interviewer: Sen Lam

Speakers: Glynd Ford, head of the 231-strong European Union election observation mission in Indonesia

Ford: What happened in Papua was that we've had no reports of any disruption where the poling took place, but Papua was the province that was most affected by logistical problems, perhaps understandably allowing for the nature of Papua, but probably close to one in four of the polling stations didn't open in the morning because of shortage of ballot papers and other material. A number of those polling stations opened later in the afternoon, but there will be some further delays probably till tomorrow and up to three or four days time before all the polling stations are able to open and voters are able to cast their votes. LAM: So polling day essentially has been stretched into a few days then?

Ford: Absolutely, the full extent of this is not known, but certainly the reports indicate that probably about 23 percent of polling stations didn't actually vote yesterday.

Lam: And many tribes people I understand had to come down from the hills to vote as well. Many not speaking Indonesian. Was this a problem?

Ford: Not, well I mean clearly it was a problem, but it doesn't seem to if you undermine the integrity of the election according to what our observers saw. But we only covered a rather limited area, so the reports we have from our our own observations was that this caused a problem. Generally, in terms of voting priorities that doesn't seem to have been a problem. It did probably affect the second choice which was to actually vote for an individual as well. We are reasonably confident that we are sending our observers to the areas where polling hasn't yet taken place to actually observe the electors when they do happen. Our view is that there's no evidence so far that they will not over the next few days have the opportunity to vote.

LAM: We've had reports that in some villagers, voters had to shout out their choice of candidate. Have you heard anything about this?

Ford: No, that's not a report we have. So let me emphasis, I mean we had a limited coverage.

Lam: I realise that polling as you say will be staggered over the next few days in Papua Province, but has counting of ballots begun in some areas?

Ford: Yes, it has. Reports from our observers now indicate that there is counting going on and that results at polling station level have been made available.

Lam: From what you can gather from your own observation and also from your other EU colleagues, have you seen anything that might be troubling at all?

Ford: At this stage we haven't, but clearly the election process is not over. We've got the aggregation of ballots and the resolutions of disputes that still go, but up to now, I mean everything seems fine. But of course if something goes wrong at this stage that could create a problem for the whole election. Every part of the process needs to have the same integrity.