T

he widely held assumption that incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and election running mate Boediono won the recent presidential election gained legitimacy as the temporary results of the General Elections Commission's (KPU) official vote count, announced Wednesday, showed they have won nearly 60 percent of votes counted so far.

By 7 p.m, the pair had officially secured 59 percent of votes from the 12 provinces tallied by the KPU. Rivals Megawati Sukarno Putri and running mate Prabowo received 25 percent and Jusuf Kalla and Wiranto received 15 percent, according to the count.

The KPU showed Mega-Prabowo taking Bali and Kalla-Wiranto taking South Sulawesi and Gorontalo; SBY-Boediono won the rest.

Votes counted in Bali, a stronghold of Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), gave the her and Prabowo a 52 percent lead over SBY-Boediono and Kalla-Wiranto.

The Kalla-Wiranto pair gained the overwhelming majority of votes in Kalla's home region of South Sulawesi, as well as Gorontalo, where they won 64 percent.

The temporary results largely reflect quick counts conducted by several pollsters, which showed the SBY-Boediono pair winning the election with 60 percent of the national vote.

The KPU has counted 43 million votes so far, including those of 17,000 unregistered voters who were allowed to vote with ID cards after a ruling by the Constitutional Court just days before the election.

The KPU plans to finish vote counting by the 24th of July and officially announce the winner the next day.

"The KPU actually planned on finishing tallying votes from 11 of the country's 33 provinces on Wednesday. Currently, we are ahead of our schedule," KPU member in charge of vote counting, Andi Nurpati, said Wednesday.

No significant objections have been raised over the vote counting, which was witnessed by representative from all three teams. Chaeruman Harahap, a witness from the Kalla-Wiranto team, did however objected to having a different electoral role for Riau than the one used by the KPU.

His role showed Riau had about 2.5 million voters, but the KPU's had more than a million more.

KPU Chief Abdul Hafiz Anshary admitted that Chaeruman's list had not been updated, but assured that election witnesses in Riau had been notified of the changes.

However, the incident highlighted lingering disputes over the election, including accusations polling officers did not provide witnesses with electoral rolls, which were allegedly manipulated.

The Megawati-Prabowo campaign team announced plans to release evidence of electoral fraud on July 24, signalling a challenge to SBY's probable victory would be made at the Constitutional Court.

"We have the materials, the evidence of electoral violations and we will present our findings to Bu Mega and Pak Prabowo on Friday," said Fadli Zon, head of the Megawati-Prabowo campaign team, as quoted by Detik.com.