T

he West Java gubernatorial race is not over yet for the two candidate pairs — incumbent Deputy Governor Dede Yusuf Macan Effendy and Lex Laksamana; and lawmaker Rieke Diah Pitaloka and antigraft activist Teten Masduki — as they claimed to still have a high chance of winning despite the fact that incumbent West Governor Ahmad “Aher” Heryawan and his running mate, actor Deddy Mizwar, took an early lead on the second day of vote counting.

As of Monday afternoon, according to West Java General Elections Commission (KPUD) secretary Heri Suherman, preliminary results showed Aher-Deddy remained on top with 31.6 percent of the vote, followed by Rike-Teten (28.6 percent); Dede-Lex (35.3 percent); Irianto MS-Tatang Farhanul Hakim (13.2 percent); and Dikdik Mulyana Arief-Cecep Nana Suryana Toyib (1.7 percent).

“The number of ballots that has arrived is only 61.36 percent from all the polling stations,” said Heri, adding that his office had only received data from 45,990 of the total 74,946 polling stations.

Heri said the manual count conducted by his office would only be completed on March 3. “After that, we will hold the plenary session.”

Several quick counts, held by bodies including the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) and Kompas daily, also declared Aher-Deddy as winners on Sunday.

The election can end in one round of voting if a candidate pair obtains a straightforward majority or is the only campaign to receive 30 percent of the total vote plus one vote.

The Rieke-Teten campaign team deemed the quick count results had yet to show an actual result. West
Java’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) regional executive board head, Tubagus Hasanuddin, said that based on his team’s vote count, none of the candidate pairs garnered more than 30 percent of the vote in the province’s gubernatorial election on Feb. 24.

“So, a second round election is required,” he said.

Tubagus referred to the real vote counts conducted by the PDI-P in 26 regencies and municipalities. According to him, Aher-Deddy garnered 29.55 percent, followed by Rieke-Teten (28.77 percent) and Dede-Lex (23.11 percent). Irianto-Tatang came in fourth with 14.62 percent, while Dikdik-Cecep obtained 3.75 percent of the vote.

Dede-Lex’s campaign team, meanwhile, refused to give up hope even though Dede himself had admitted defeat.

The team claimed on Monday that based on quick counts conducted by the team from 435 samples (polling stations), the most votes went to Dede-Lex with 34.42 percent, followed by Aher-Deddy (30.74 percent) and Rieke-Teten (23.3 percent).

The top two campaigns among the lowest scorers were still Irianto-Tatang, who garnered 9.78 percent, and Dikdik-Cecep with 1.74 percent.

“We respected the quick count results, but after we compared them with the real vote counts that we conducted, there were many differences,” Didin said. “Don’t surrender to the quick counts; the battle is not over yet,” he added.

The difference in counting, said Didin, was seen from the official vote counts they recorded, which showed that Dede-Lex surpassed other candidate pairs in Cianjur, Purwakarta and Ciamis regencies.

Didin said if the margin of error from each of the survey institutions was 5 percent, vote counts from the 26 regencies and municipalities should not be far from the results of the three regencies.

West Java is the most densely populated province in the country with more than 49 million residents. It is home to a number of strategic industrial zones where hundreds of multinational manufacturers operate.

Famous for its Islamic culture, West Java has also become the province with the largest number of religious-intolerance incidents in Indonesia, according to a recent survey carried out by the Wahid Institute.