Losing governor candidates file protest

Yuli Tri Suwarni , The Jakarta Post , Bandung | Wed, 04/23/2008 1:07 AM | Headlines

Clashes between supporters of the Agum Gumelar and Nu'man Abdul Hakim (Aman) gubernatorial candidate pair and anti-riot police Tuesday marred the announcement of the West Java election results.

Clashes broke out repeatedly at the entrance to Jl. Garut in Bandung, some 200 meters from the provincial General Elections Commission (KPUD) office where the results meeting took place.

Supporters of the Aman pair objected to the official report issued in the plenary meeting declaring Ahmad Heryawan and Dede Yusuf (Hade) the winners. They alleged vote rigging and irregularities in voter registrations which had caused many to lose their voting rights.

Police detained a protester, Indra, 32, affiliated with the Indonesian Commoners Movement (GMBI) in Bekasi, for allegedly hitting a police officer during the clashes. Indra was reportedly beaten by dozens of police officers after the alleged assault.

Another protester, Dede, 29, passed out and was taken to the hospital after he was involved in a scuffle with police.

The chaos was initially triggered after protesters tossed plastic bottles at members of the anti-riot unit who were preventing the crowd from reaching the KPUD office. It intensified when the crowd demanded to meet five KPUD members to cancel the meeting.

The plenary meeting announced election results had been tallied from 18,802,665 voters or 67.3 percent of the 27,933,259 total eligible voters.

The KPUD found 17,996,105 valid and 806,560 non-valid votes. The Hade pair garnered the majority of votes with 7,287,647, or 40.05 percent of the total, followed by the Aman duo with 6,217,557 votes or 34.5 percent and incumbent Governor Danny Setiawan and his running mate Iwan Sulandjana (Dai) with 4,490,091 votes or 25.0 percent.

The official report of the plenary meeting, signed by five KPUD members, was headed by Setia Permana and approved by two witnesses from the Hade and Dai candidate pairs.

Rahardi Zakaria, a witness from the Dai team, said he would file a lawsuit with the Supreme Court in the next three days to voice objections over the results.

"We found many cases of vote-rigging which were in favor of the Hade pair, such as in Cianjur, which didn't match with the vote count tallied internally by our members," said Rahardi.

Setia said the KPUD would prepare a defense team to face the charges, adding that the final election results remained valid and would be reported to the Home Minister through the provincial legislature. He said the presence of witnesses would not influence the vote count.

"Law No. 32/2004 on regional administrations stipulates that we can issue an official report and recapitulation certificates of vote counts signed by the head or at least two KPUD members from the regencies and cities, and signed by witnesses from two candidate pairs. It does not stipulate any requirement on the presence of witnesses," said Setia.

Rahardi deemed otherwise. "We will file our objection in order to invalidate the election outcome until a court decision that is binding is available to overrule all our objections," said Rahardi.

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