Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Wahyono cautioned Monday of the possibility for clashes in the capital on Wednesday - when citizens will vote in the presidential election - as disputes related to the validity of the electoral roll remain unresolved.
Wahyono asked the people of Jakarta to not be easily provoked and to help create an orderly atmosphere on election day.
The Jakarta Police have categorized more than 250 polling stations in the city as being at a high risk for incidents, including 264 located far from police stations.
"All personnel will move to police precincts," Wahyono said after inspecting troops' readiness to ensure order during the election.
The police have tightened security as skepticism of the validity of the electoral roll for the presidential election continues. Last week, a team from the House of Representatives found the General Elections Commission (KPU) knew that nearly 50 million eligible citizens had not been registered to vote in the presidential election.
The commission also disclosed irregularities, including the fact that there were 420 identical names and single identity numbers, children, dead people, military and police personnel (who are legally barred from voting) on the electoral role.
Both the Elections Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) and the Indonesian Voters Committee found the electoral roll for July's presidential election was exactly the same as the one used for April's legislative polls, which saw around 47 million citizens denied their right to vote.
In Jakarta, the number of people on the electoral roll for the presidential election has increased by nearly 600,000 from the legislative election, Jakarta KPU member Sumarno said. The number of polling booths, however, has reduced by around 5,000.
Presidential candidates Jusuf Kalla and Megawati Soekarnoputri have voiced their concern over these problems and demanded the KPU to immediately resolve them, or postpone the elections.
In a joint press conference Sunday, Megawati and her running mate Prabowo Subianto and their rivals Kalla and his running mate Wiranto expressed optimism that the polling body could fix the problems with the electoral roll in a day - if it had the good will to do so.
However, on Saturday, the polling body insisted that it had fixed the much-derided roll, saying that the body had allowed the Bawaslu greater access to verify the electoral roll last week.
To safeguard Wednesday's election, the Jakarta Police will deploy 16,500 officers to polling stations city wide. This will include members of the Jakarta police force, the police mobile brigade (Brimob), the preventive task force, the water police, the anti-riot police and officers from the counter terror squad.
Wahyono said that another 4,000 personnel would patrol the streets in Jakarta. "Besides that we still have around 9,000 personnel," he said.
The Jakarta Police, in coordination with the city administration, will also deploy more than 61,000 public order officers.
Wahyono said that personnel must not leave their assigned location until the election process was over.
