Khairul Saleh, Palembang – Home Minister Mardiyanto is scheduled to install Alex Noerdin and Eddy Yusuf as South Sumatra's new governor and vice governor on Friday.
South Sumatra's General Elections Commission (KPUD) has declared that Alex and Eddy (aka Aldy) won the Sept. 11 gubernatorial election, defeating incumbent Syahrial Oesman and his partner Helmi Yahya (Sohe), their sole competitors in the controversial, neck-and-neck race.
Aldy, nominated by the Golkar Party, garnered 1,866,390 votes (51.40 percent), edging out Sohe, who, backed by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), received 1,764,373 votes (48.60 percent).
Tensions ran high prior to the official announcement as, after polling stations closed, two opposing quick count results were published simultaneously.
Results issued by the Policy and Development Strategy Research Center (Puskaptis) declared Sohe the winner with 51.12 percent of votes to Aldy's 48.88 percent.
Meanwhile, two other pollsters claimed the opposite, declaring Aldy had one with some 51 percent of the vote. Puskaptis, political consultant for the Sohe pair, was unavailable for comment.
Both camps announced their victory through advertisements in the local media. The contradicting election results have raised public anxiety in the region. This has caused the public to question the credibility and independence of survey institutions.
The East Kalimantan KPUD banned quick count announcements during the second round of the Oct. 23 gubernatorial election fearing they could lead to civil unrest.
Adman Nursal, director of Maestro Strategious Institute in Jakarta, said that Puskaptis used inaccurate quick count methods to sway the election in their favor.
The number of polling stations sampled did not accurately reflect the number of voters in areas including the Prabumulih and Musi Banyuasin regencies. "Vote counting is therefore inaccurate and does not correspond with the results of the KPUD," Adman said.
He said that, in principal, quick counts are a scientific means of determining possible procedural and documentational irregularities in elections, but intentional errors are hard to pardon because of the intent to cheat the public, which disadvantages the people at large.
Meanwhile, Ardian Saptawan of the Socio-political Sciences post graduate program at Sriwijaya University in Palembang said that the public should be aware of a survey agencies credibility, including its track record, the people behind it, their educational background and professional experience. The agency itself must be responsible and open too, he said.
There are suggestions that survey institutes should be certified, although it was not clear which institute, state or public, could issue the certificate.
Secretary general of the Public Opinion Research Association, Muhammad Umar Bakry, supported the certification idea and said it could help avoid political tension in the future.
"Pollsters must be certified so they can be held responsible for their findings," said Bakry, who is also director of the National Survey Institution.