The General Elections Commission (KPU) is crying "fraud" in the wake of massive data discrepancies in vote count reports coming out of Kaur Regency in Bengkulu province.
Two legitimate data sources showing different results from the April 9 legislative election in the regency have raised suspicions of vote fraud, an official with the KPU revealed.
"Data from the regional KPU and party witnesses are both legitimate in terms of procedure, but the numbers are very different," KPU member I Gusti Putu Artha said on the sidelines of the election manual count in Jakarta on Friday.
According to KPU data, the total number of voters in the regency was nearly 82,600 and there were about 68,500 ballots used. But data from witnesses states there were a total of 33,211 voters and 68,666 ballots.
"Some parties had more votes, while others had less. The significant data distortions indicate there are signs of manipulation.
"The plenary meeting has decided that an investigation team will go to Bengkulu and investigate it," Putu said.
The team will collect the sealed ballot boxes containing the election results from subdistricts across Bengkulu, then return to Jakarta with the evidence Sunday.
"The validity of the Kaur election cannot yet be verified. The data from the subdistricts is expected to provide the legitimate results," he said.
Putu said if it could be proved that KPU members in Kaur were involved in fraud, the central KPU would uphold the law and ask the Elections Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) to recommend imposing sanctions.
Party witnesses slammed the poor KPU performance and Bawaslu's lack of effective monitoring.
"We respect the KPU's decision to use data from the subdistricts but that does not mean we will accept it unconditionally," witness Arif Wibowo from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) said.
He said if data was still questionable, the PDI-P would reject the overall manual count results. His bold statement was followed by similar pledges by witnesses from the Freedom Fortress National Party (PNBK), the Ulema National Awakening Party (PKNU), the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), the National Mandate Party (PAN) and the People's Conscience (Hanura)Party.
Arjus Purnama, chairman of the KPU regional office in Kaur regency, said his data was valid.
"There is only one source of valid data, and we had that delivered to the KPU office in Bengkulu," he added.
Bawaslu member Wahidah Suaib blamed the KPU for the Kaur fiasco, saying her office had done its job.
"We have the data on the Kaur election, but we can't present it right now, because our member in charge of it left Jakarta three days ago for Bengkulu," she said.
She added that the KPU should improve coordination with its regional offices to avoid such distortions from recurring.
"Regional offices should prepare the data, check for distortions, and fix it before sending it to the manual count recap center," she said.
The overall national manual count of 31.6 million votes showed that as of Friday, PDI-P still topped the list with 6.1 million votes (19.5 percent), the Democratic Party had 5.4 million votes (17 percent) and Golkar Party was on 4.4 million votes (14.1 percent).
The manual count has verified results in 13 provinces across Indonesia, though results from Banten, Bengkulu, South Sumatra, and South Kalimantan provinces were suspended following the data discrepancies. (fmb)
