Kalla and Wiranto arrived at the office on Jl. Imam Bonjol first, followed by incumbent Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his running mate Boediono, who came 15 minutes later.

Noticing that Yudhoyono had just arrived, Kalla stood up and approached the man who defeated him and shook his hand. Wiranto followed suit.

The gesture was in stark contrast to the behavior of Megawati Soekarnoputri and Prabowo Subianto who did not even attend the ceremony.  

By attending the announcement, however, Kalla was not entirely surrendering. His campaign team is poised to file a lawsuit to the Constitutional Court on Monday over alleged electoral fraud especially in relation to the final electoral roll (DPT).

The KPU’s official final vote count showed that Yudhoyono secured his re-election with 60.8 percent of votes followed by Megawati-Prabowo, a distant second with 26.8 percent. Kalla-Wiranto trailed with a mere 12.4 percent. There were 121.5 million valid votes lodged on election day.

Burhanuddin Napitupulu, a member of the Kalla-Wiranto campaign team, said his team was also ready to file a lawsuit.

“We found 153 violations during the election, with 27 million double names on the electoral roll,” Burhanuddin told reporters on the sidelines of the announcement.

Burhanuddin said Kalla, Wiranto and the team had accepted the official election results released by the KPU. However, he said they refused to sign the document declaring Yudhoyono as the winner.

“We accept the result but not the process [of the election],” he said.

Members of the campaign team for Megawati and Prabowo also said that they would contest the official results. Gayus Lumbuun, head of the legal team for the pair, said that he would file a lawsuit over alleged violations with the court by Tuesday.

Gayus said the commission was rushing the announcement of the result.

“They [the KPU] have 30 days to count the votes but they only used half of it,” he said.

“The result should not have come out until Aug. 7 or 8.”

Another Megawati campaign team member, Firman Jaya Deli, said the team had found many violations and systematic frauds during the election process.

“In turn, this significantly affected the number of votes for the Megawati–Prabowo pair,” he said.

Meanwhile in his private residence in Cikeas, south of Jakarta, Yudhoyono was forced to delay his acceptance speech after his competitors rejected the results.

Yudhoyono said Saturday he preferred to wait until the Constitutional Court had settled the case before delivering his acceptance speech.

“I’ve chosen to follow the process as part of the political ethics and understanding that I abide
by,” Yudhoyono told the press shortly after receiving the official vote tally results.

He added that he thanked God the 2009 legislative and presidential elections had “basically run peacefully and democratically” despite reports of election irregularities.

Commenting on his competitors’ rejection, Yudhoyono said: “Irregularities in elections do not always mean cheating, but they do need to be corrected and settled”.

He added that his camp had also found indications of fraud in a number of regions, some of which had been reported to local Elections Supervisory Committees (Panwaslu).

Yudhoyono also said his campaign team had intended to report some findings on vote discrepancies to the Constitutional Court, but decided not to in the end because the vote margins only amounted to several hundred votes and any court decision was unlikely to change the results of the KPU’s final vote tally.

“We will however provide inputs and recommendations to the government and the House of
Representatives on how to improve the elections law in the future,” he said. (adh)

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