The General Elections Commission (KPU) is racing against time to finish manual vote counting as the May 9 deadline draws near.

As of Sunday, the commission has finished verification of over 64 million votes from 20 of the nation's 33 provinces.

The vote tally, from Sumatra and densely populated Java, among other places, finally saw President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party (PD) take over the lead with 19.46 percent of the vote. The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) trailed with 15.85 percent of the votes, followed by the Golkar Party, with 15.27 percent.

Quick counts revealed that the PD won 20 percent of the votes to finish first in the legislative elections.

Despite the progress in the KPU manual count, concern that the process will not finish on time remains visible.

Inaccurate data from local poll bodies (KPUD) has sparked debates and protests from parties, KPU and Elections Supervisory Board (Bawaslu) alike. An acceptable solution for everyone concerned has not been agreed upon.

Problems involving alleged vote fraud have been found in Bengkulu and South Kalimantan.

The KPU has verified the election results in both Banten and South Sumatra, but delayed verifying the votes from Bengkulu and South Kalimantan, pending an investigation into the alleged vote fraud.

“The KPU has been slow in resolving such problems and tends to depend on the Constitutional Court to solve them. If this situation persists, it could delay the schedule for the presidential election,” Bawaslu member Wahidah Suaib said.

She said the main problem lies in the inaccurate data from the KPUDs, which the national elections body is using for the manual count.

“KPUDs send inaccurate data to the KPU for the manual count. This data is often incomplete and flawed but they send it anyway because of the approaching deadline,” she said.

The KPU's failure to announce the results of the legislative polls on May 9 will force it to move back the presidential election stages, which should begin on May 10 with registration of presidential and vice presidential candidates.

However, KPU member I Gusti Putu Artha said the commission remains upbeat that it can meet the May 9 deadline.

“We understand that the debates are slowing the verification process. We have required the regional poll offices to synchronize their data with those from involved parties before sending them to Jakarta for verification,” he said. (fmb)

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