The Elections Monitoring Agency (Bawaslu) said that stalled vote counting in some provinces was mostly due to alleged vote-rigging, not administrative errors.
Bawaslu chairman Muhammad said over the weekend that the agency had issued a recommendation to the National Police to launch an investigation into individuals allegedly responsible for election-related crimes that had caused vote-counting delays.
“We have issued a recommendation with names of people allegedly responsible for the criminal acts,” he told reporters at the General Elections Commission (KPU) headquarters in Menteng, Central Jakarta.
Muhammad said that Bawaslu had issued the recommendation after collecting information from its regional branches or Elections Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu).
“We have received details from our regional branches, where they found that the culprits changed [the results of the vote tallying] not because of negligence, but intentionally,” he said.
As of Saturday, the KPU has only wrapped up vote tallying from nine of the country’s 33 provinces.
The KPU has until May 9 to finish the job.
The nine provinces are Bali, Bangka Belitung, Central Kalimantan, Central Sulawesi, Gorontalo, Jambi, West Kalimantan, West Sumatra and West Nusa Tenggara (NTB).
The KPU is struggling to complete its work for votes from West Sulawesi; East Kalimantan; North Sulawesi; Aceh; Banten; Bengkulu; Central Java; Jakarta; Lampung; Riau; Southeast Sulawesi; West Java; and Yogyakarta, amid complaints of administrative errors from political parties.
“Almost in all provinces, Bawslu found discrepancies [between the result of the recapitulation at the national level and those at the lower administrative levels]. In provinces where vote tallying has been stalled, crimes have been alleged,” Muhammad said.
KPU commissioner Ferry Kurnia Rizkiyansyah said that out of all provinces that experienced stalled vote counting, only four reported inconsistencies between data collected by the KPU and political parties contesting the April 9 legislative election.
“They are Bengkulu, Yogyakarta, Southeast Sulawesi and South Sumatra,” he said.
In the case of Yogyakarta, for example, the Bawaslu had recommended the KPU’s regional branch there to redo the recapitulation process in the regency and city level by opening up the vote recapitulation [C1] forms once again.
The recommendation was based on a complaint from the Golkar Party, which found that there were vote discrepancies in 19 polling stations in Yogyakarta, 18 of which were proven to be true.
The latest province to have its vote tallying process halted was North Sulawesi.
Muhammad said that the Bawaslu’s staffers found that some ballots had been disposed of in East Bolaang Mongondow regency.
North Sulawesi General Elections Committee (KPUD) head Yessy Monangan confirmed the report, but said that the committee decided not to follow up on the findings since there was no recommendation from the Panwaslu there.
Muhammad said that the KPUD should not have waited for a recommendation from the Panwaslu to act.
Ferry said that he believed most of the delays were caused by honest mistakes.
“I’m sure that there was no ill-intent by the election organizers,” he said.
Source/Fuente: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/05/05/election-related-crimes-co...
