Robert Go, Jakarta – Several election workers have admitted to tampering with poll results, in yet another scandal to hit Indonesia's first direct presidential vote on July 5.
The General Elections Commission (KPU) said yesterday that it has fired seven local officials from West Kalimantan province for vote tampering.
KPU member Ramlan Subakti said workers from other parts of Indonesia are now being investigated for similar offences. "If we get proof that showed manipulation of ballots, then those involved would also be fired," he said.
The police have declared one official from South Sumatra province as a suspect. At least four other election workers in the same province have been questioned.
Controversies also surround the KPU's vote count. Reports from South Sulawesi, for instance, indicate discrepancies between the results announced by district and provincial count centres.
The total number of votes at the provincial level should match the cumulative number of votes from the various districts. However, the provincial total includes results that differ by wide margins. Observers said these developments could damage the credibility of the election results.
As of now, the official tally by the KPU is progressing slowly. It has been 11 days since the election, but only 105.6 million votes – representing just 68 per cent of the total number of registered voters – have been counted.
Former security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has 33.6 per cent of the votes counted so far, remains in pole position. President Megawati Sukarnoputri is second with 26.3 per cent, followed by retired general Wiranto with 22.2 per cent.
Observers said voter turnout was in the 80 per cent range, meaning about 125 million votes were cast. The problem behind the glacial pace of the count might be logistical.
Out of about 575,000 polling stations, only 87 per cent have reported in to higher-level count centres. The rest could be in remote locations, where the transporting of filled ballot boxes to provincial centres might take longer. The delays have led to speculation that some sort of organised tampering is happening in the various regions.
Observers have noted that ballot boxes are being transported without being accompanied by witnesses and a proper security escort.
Mr Hadar Gumay of the Centre for Electoral Reform said: 'The problem is that there is no mechanism to make certain that manipulation does not happen, and that the count process is consistently and transparently done. "The trust level for the election results remains high, but people do think that tampering is a possibility. The question is how much of it goes on."
The KPU is scheduled to announce the official results only on July 26, or three weeks after the election. While it has a highly publicised and costly computerised counting system in place, its own laws stipulate that only the result of a manual count is legal and binding.
This has led many to question why the KPU spent millions of dollars developing an electronic counting system if its results would not be accepted.