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fter being ridiculed by the public for using dubious pollsters to back up its claim of winning the July 9 presidential election, the camp of the Gerindra Party-led Prabowo Subianto and Hatta Rajasa presidential ticket reported two pollsters that released results indicating a win for the rival ticket to the Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) on Friday.

Echoing a statement from Prabowo, lawyers accused the two pollsters of fabricating their quick count results in favor of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle'€™s (PDI-P) presidential ticket of Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo and Jusuf Kalla. Bawaslu, however, pointed out that it could not do much to accommodate such a complaint.

M. Maulana, a member of the team advocating for Prabowo, insisted that the Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC) and the Cyrus Network were siding with Jokowi. Therefore, he said, they had provided the public with false information to damage Jokowi'€™s rival.

'€œWe lament this siding because surveys and quick counts are a form of public participation, which should educate people, not make a fool of the public by providing inaccurate data,'€ he said before filing the report at Bawaslu headquarters in Thamrin, Central Jakarta.

According to Maulana, the SMRC is not independent, as its founder, Saiful Mujani, publicly admitted that he was campaigning against the candidacy of Prabowo.

'€œIt is clear that Saiful Mujani has a conflict of interest in conducting a quick count,'€ he said.

Maulana then pointed the finger at the Cyrus Network. '€œThe Cyrus Network was a consultant of Jokowi during the Jakarta gubernatorial election in 2012,'€ he said.

'€œIt is very likely that the Cyrus Network became the consultant of Jokowi again in this presidential election.'€

In contrast, the Strategic Development and Policy Research Center (Puskaptis), the Indonesia Votes Network (JSI) and the National Survey Institute (LSN) sparked public outrage because they declared Prabowo the winner of the presidential race, while credible pollsters such as the SMRC and Cyrus concluded that Jokowi had won the tight race.

Commenting on the report, Bawaslu commissioner Nelson Simanjuntak said that the agency had nothing to do with pollsters.

'€œThe case is more related to the survey institutions'€™ ethical codes. We cannot meddle in that. How can we prove that the quick-count results favored [a particular candidate]?'€ he said at his office.

Nelson said that even if the pollsters were found guilty of bias, then the worst scenario would be for them to be not included on the list of pollsters allowed by the General Elections Commission (KPU) to release quick-count results to the public.

'€œBut that would be useless, since they already released their quick-count results,'€ Nelson explained.

Also on Friday, Jokowi'€™s advocacy team reported a number of violations from voting day, including vote-buying, to Bawaslu.

A member of the team, Vera, said that they had found cases of voters receiving money in envelopes prior to voting in Bogor, as well as Cijambu subdistrict in Cianjur, both in West Java.

'€œBefore voting, a voter named Susanti [in Cianjur] was given Rp 150,000 in an envelope,'€ she said.

The envelope reportedly had an image of Prabowo and Hatta on it.

Besides vote-buying, the advocacy team also reported a case of a ballot being annulled in South Jakarta because a voter punched a hole that was too big, even though the hole was still inside the box for Jokowi.

According to the advocacy team, there were a total of 19 violations reported to Bawaslu, complete with evidence such as eyewitness statements and video.