Jakarta – Coordinating Politics and Security Minister Budi Gunawan guaranteed that people affected by natural disasters can still exercise their voting rights in the upcoming regional elections on Wednesday.
"The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency [BMKG] predicts that until February 2025, several areas in North Sumatra, East Java and Central Kalimantan will experience flash floods," he said in Jakarta on Monday, as reported by tempo.co.
"This will require the relocation of several polling stations."
The Wednesday simultaneous elections will be held in 545 regions, consisting of 37 provinces and 508 cities and regencies.
Budi also assured that the logistics distribution for the regional head elections will continue in areas affected by disasters. Task forces deployed by the Indonesian Military are also assisting in logistics delivery, particularly to remote and outer regions.
"Anticipatory measures have been prepared, including training exercises for the command posts and city systems," said Budi.
This statement was confirmed by the General Elections Commission (KPU) chairman Mochammad Afifuddin, who said that 98.39 percent of the total 836,069 ballot boxes had started to bedistributed to the district election committees (PPK).
"In total, around 47.92 percent of ballot boxes have been received by the PPK," he said after the press conference. He also ensured that the logistics distribution would be completed soon.
KPU also confirmed that the printing of ballots was nearly complete. According to KPU monitoring data as of Nov. 24, a total of 206 million or 99.99 percent of gubernatorial election ballots have been printed. Meanwhile, a total of 201,539,680 or 99.79 percent of ballots for the regent elections have been printed.
KPU Commissioner Yulianto Sudrajat told the press conference that the distribution process would be completed one day before voting. Once received by the polling station committees in the sub-district and village level, the logistics will then be distributed to the polling stations, he said.