Camelia Pasandaran – The nation's capital has handed President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his running mate Boediono a landslide result in the presidential elections, with the incumbent securing more than 70 percent of the city's vote, the General Elections Commission confirmed on Monday.
The size of the defeat has not deterred the campaign team of Megawati Sukarnoputri, the chairwoman of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), from refusing to sign off on the election results in the capital.
According to the official count by the commission, also known as the KPU, Yudhoyono received 70.4 percent (3,543,472) of the total vote, followed by Megawati and running mate Prabowo Subianto with 20.4 percent (1,028,227 votes). Vice President Jusuf Kalla and Wiranto were third with just 9.2 percent (464,257 votes).
Compared with quick counts taken by polling organizations on the day of the presidential elections, the victory is well above the national average, which showed Yudhoyono taking 61 percent of the total vote, Megawati 27 percent and Kalla about 10 percent.
Dahlia Umar, a member of the Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPUD), said the only problem it had encountered was the refusal of the Megawati-Prabowo campaign team to sign off on the elections.
"They have refused to sign off on the results citing voters list problems and accusations that the legislative elections were not conducted fairly and honestly," Dahlia said on Monday.
She said that in Jakarta, there were no significant problems with the voters list although she added, without elaborating, that there were some minor procedural issues. "However, the most important thing for us is that there was no vote manipulation," she said.
Dahlia said the Megawati team's refusal to sign off on the election result would not change anything. "The no-sign act will not stop us declaring the result," she said, adding that the other two candidates of Yudhoyono and Kalla camps have not expressed any problems with the result.
Ramdansyah, head of Jakarta Election Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu), said there were no significant problems during the presidential election in Jakarta. "What small problems there were have been politicized by parties that failed to win," he said.
According to him, there were few violations in Jakarta – about 20 cases. "These have already been reported to the Election Supervisory Board (Bawaslu)," he said.
Most of the violations in Jakarta related to election officials who failed to make public the final voters list at the polling stations. "The list should put up on a board or stuck to a wall so people can see it," he said.
Megawati's team could not be reached for confirmation of its objections to the Jakarta poll results.