People tend to assume the quick-count conclusion, as published every day in the newspapers, is the official result of the legislative election collected by the KPU. People's assumptions are definitely incorrect; recent information indicated that the KPU has been behind schedule, though one of its members stated that the final result of the manual counting by the KPU would be announced on May 9, 2009.
The incorrect people's assumption about the result of the polls however, has created an unpleasant political atmosphere. The arrogant attitude of the Democrat Party which subjectively considered itself as political master has caused the collapse of the coalition between the Democrat Party and the Golkar Party.
A number of inconvenient developments have been recorded as follows:
The case of the permanent voter list (DPT) tends to indicate that it is not just a technical error, but it does indicate the incompetence of the KPU in performing its mission. This incompetence has been considered the main reason for the serious defeat of a large number of political parties; accordingly, it has been politicized by those political parties which lost in their effort to win the parliamentary threshold, in order to reject the results of the legislative election.
The credible, official results of the legislative election could not be performed daily and the site of the tabulation center located at the Borobudur Hotel finally closed. Day by day it has been proved that the present KPU, elected and inaugurated by the House, is really too incompetent to accomplish its mission. The slow announcement of credible, official and regular information on the election result has affected people's assumption that the quick-count result is the credible, official and correct result of the legislative election.
This fact has become the main controversial issue among political parties, and become the main weapon used to criticize SBY (as the President) by his rivals. The President is considered responsible for the confusing implementation of the election. The President's denial of the accusation, instead pointing his finger at the KPU as the one responsible, has not erased the accusation that the President, as the head of the government, is responsible for this serious matter.
The poor implementation of the election has clearly encouraged the establishment of a formidable competitor to SBY (the Teuku Umar Axis, Megawati's opposition camp, which is supported by a number of retired generals and politicians), who has attacked SBY with the accusation of responsibility for the worst election implementation compared to those in 1999 and 2004.
It has been suggested that the time limit on the official result of the legislative election and the implementation of the presidential election should be delayed. However, the elected president should be inaugurated before the end of December 2009 and the annual budget of 2010-2011 should have been delivered to the House in January 2010 by the new president.
This proposal is aimed at giving the KPU the chance to finalize the results of the legislative election and to prepare the permanent voter list (DPT) for the presidential election. This change in agenda, however, does not necessarily mean stopping political parties from making their political preparations for the election.
Soedibyo
Jakarta
