The presidency may already be in incumbent Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s pocket, but the Election Supervisory Agency’s (Bawaslu) recent findings of electoral violations spread evenly in more than 17 provinces may thwart that possibility.

Bawaslu members Wahidah Suaib announced Monday it had found 539 administrative and criminal electoral violations spread evenly across the country’s 33 provinces.

Wahidah said the criminal violations included findings of polling officers caught ticking leftover ballots, which had already been ticked before polling day, and voters trying to vote more than once.

Examples of these violations included a village chief from Kolang, Central Tapanuli, North Sumatra, who was arrested for already filling out 52 ballots before polling day.

Another involved polling officers at four polling stations in Papua who were caught moving and combining their polling stations and ticking all the ballots themselves.

The administrative violations included cases of polling officers unwilling or unable to provide polling witnesses with copies of the voters list and polling officers losing polling documents that may prove valuable as evidence.

Wahidah said out of the 539 administrative and criminal violations, 188 administrative violations had been corrected and 67 criminal violations had been followed up with criminal charges.

A further 13 criminal violations had been completely settled.

She added the list may rise as regional election supervisors (Panwaslu) in several provinces such as North Sumatra and Bengkulu had yet to submit their report.

The list may endanger Yudhoyono’s supposed victory, as election law stipulates that candidates may challenge polling results if said candidates could prove that another candidate did not win majority votes in 17 provinces, keeping alive the possibility that Yudhoyono’s victory may still be taken away.

According to quick counts, Yudhoyono took more than 60 percent of the votes compared to the Megawati–Prabowo and the Jusuf Kalla–Wiranto pairs, who had about 20 percent and 10 percent of the votes, respectively.

When asked about such a possibility, Wahidah said the list could provide strong evidence for any candidate who would like to challenge Yudhoyono’s victory as signalled by various quick counts.

“That is certainly up to the challengers.

“If they can find proof that the cheating had cost votes, enough to thin out the margin between the challenger and the other candidate, then the presidency may still be up for grabs.”

When asked whether the Bawaslu had determined whether a particular candidate had benefitted from the violations, Wahidah said her committee was still investigating.

“The Bawaslu has not determined whether a particular candidate profited from the violations because from all the candidates seemed to have profited from these cheating practices,” Wahidah said during the press conference at the Bawaslu office in Jakarta.

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