The Jakarta Post ,  JAKARTA   |  Tue, 08/18/2009 11:15 AM  |  National

The General Elections Commission (KPU) will officially name President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his running mate Boediono as the July 8 presidential election winners in Jakarta on Tuesday.

The KPU’s decision to announce SBY’s victory was made after the Constitutional Court last week ruled to reject complaints from two other presidential candidates, Megawati Soekarnoputri of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and Vice President Jusuf Kalla of Golkar Party.

“The announcement will take place at the KPU office on Aug. 18 on 10 A.M.,” KPU chairman Abdul Hafiz Anshary told reporters over the weekend.

“We have invited leaders of the Constitutional Court , the Supreme Court, the House of Representatives, the People’s Consultative Assembly and the Regional Representatives Council to attend the ceremony.”

Based on the KPU’s vote counting, SBY managed to garner around 73.8 million votes during the election or 60.8 percent of the total votes, far surpassing his two challengers, Megawati and Kalla, who attained 26.7 percent and 12.4 percent of total votes respectively.

The Indonesian law on presidential elections says a candidate must receive more than 50 percent of the votes to win.

The KPU was due to declare Democratic Party candidate Yudhoyono and his running mate Boediono, former Bank Indonesia governor, the winners late last month when it had officially finished counting votes from all regions across the country.

However, it had to postpone the announcement after Megawati and his running mate Prabowo Subianto of the Greater Indonesian Movement Party (Gerindra) as well as Kalla and his running mate Wiranto of People’s Conscience Party (Hanura) filed lawsuits against the election results.

The losers claimed the election was fraudulent due to severe mismanagement of the electoral roll.

They claimed the electoral roll contained some 28 million mysterious votes, which benefited SBY.

They deemed Yudhoyono’s victory to be illegitimate and therefore submitted their objection on the election to the Constitutional Court .

The losing candidates demanded the Court grant them a re-election.

However, the Court ruled that the losers’ stack of evidence were not solid enough and declared SBY had won the election fair and square.

The Court’s chief, Mahfud MD, said the claim by the losing candidates that Yudhoyono had received additional votes while they had received less votes were “legally baseless”.

Shortly after the ruling, Megawati said that she said she could understand the Court’s decision during a press conference at her house in Jl. Teuku Umar.

Megawati admitted the position of the Constitutional Court was vital to the country’s legal system as it was the last “door” for anyone who wanted to struggle for better democracy in Indonesia .

A lawyer for Kalla’s team, Chaeruman Harahap, also said despite the fact that he considered the Court’s ruling to be questionable, his team had to accept the court’s ruling. (hdt)