The Jakarta Post ,  JAKARTA   |  Tue, 05/05/2009 11:34 AM  |  National

The General Elections Commission (KPU) is working overtime to manually count votes from the 2009 legislative elections to ensure it meets the May 9 deadline scheduled for the announcement of the results.  

Normally, those manually counting the votes stop work at 11 p.m. each evening, but with the announcement date looming, the commission is preparing to extend work hours into the early morning.

“If necessary, we will work until 3 a.m. in order to make the announcement date for the results on time,” KPU member Endang Sulastri said on the sidelines of the manual count Monday.

The polls body initially expected to have completed the manual-counting process by May 7, therefore allowing it to inform political parties of who had won the legislative seats.

Still, as the deadline closes in, the commission remains confident about finishing the manual count for the remaining 11 provinces by May 9.

“We’re still optimistic we can finish the manual count on time because we have scheduled the
vote counting for each province,” Endang said.

As of Monday, the KPU manual count had recorded nearly 72,000,000 legitimate votes from 50 electorate areas across 22 provinces.

The latest vote tally suggests the Golkar Party has overtaken the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) for second place behind the Democratic Party.

Endang said the main issue slowing down the manual count was unnecessary debates surrounding inaccurate data.

“The manual count plenary session is always marked with debates involving the KPU, the Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu), and the party witnesses. The debates often last for hours. The count would be smoother and faster if we could minimize these arguments,” she said.

Earlier, I Gusti Putu Artha, another KPU member, had requested the regional KPU offices synchronize their vote count data before sending it to the manual count center in Hotel Borobudur, Jakarta , to avoid unnecessary disputes over the verification process.

KPU chief Abdul Hafiz Anshary said he was optimistic the polls body would meet the deadline, despite setbacks, at a hearing with the House of Representatives lawmakers on Monday.

“We face many obstacles during the counting process, especially from political party witnesses and legislative candidates in the regions,” Abdul said.

“We usually take hours to deal with their protests and sometimes we are forced to delay approval of the counting. However, God willing, we will be able to finish the manual count by May 8.”

Failure to meet this deadline will result in the KPU postponing the presidential election, said Abdul.

“If the worst happens, we will have no choice but to delay the presidential election,” he said.
So far, the Democratic Party (PD) has maintained the lead with more than 14 million votes (19.74 percent), followed by the Golkar Party with almost 11.1 million votes (15.59 percent).

PDI-P is currently third with 10.6 million votes (14.9 percent) ahead of the Prosperous Justice
Party (PKS) with nearly 6 million votes (8.29 percent) and the National Mandate Party (PAN) with
4.5 million votes (6.32 percent). (fmb/hdt)