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special regulation on elections in Papua is necessary for dealing with recurrent pitfalls plaguing the region'€™s regional, legislative and presidential votes, a commissioner of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) has said.

'€œConsidering the recurring problems that happen in Yahukimo regency every time an election is held, the KPU [General Elections Commission] should have implemented a special regulation that is not applied nationally,'€ commissioner Nur Kholis said in Jayapura on Friday.

Nur was in Jayapura after monitoring the presidential vote in Yahukimo from Tuesday to Thursday.

He said weather had been the main challenge in the region as all the election materials had to be flown in.

According to national KPU regulation, election materials must be at all polling stations the day before voting.

'€œIn practice, however, the logistics that were already taken to the airport had to be brought back to the KPUD [Regional General Elections Commission] office in Yahukimo'€™s capital of Dekai because the flight was canceled due to bad weather,'€ Nur said.

As a result, of the 51 districts in Yahukimo, only 30 could hold the election on schedule while the remaining 21 could not because the logistics had yet to reach polling stations.

Other problems, he added, included the readiness of the polling stations to conduct the election.

On voting day, some stations lacked polling booths and others were manned by police in lieu of election officials.

'€œThe confidentiality requirement was not met,'€ Nur said, adding that in Dekai only four out of eight polling stations were able to conduct the election.

As an example of exceptions made for the area, Nur suggested that the ballots be printed in Papua and not in Jakarta, as the distribution took time.

He also said materials should be sent to polling stations earlier in Papua, given the geographic difficulties of the region.

Meanwhile, Papua KPUD chairman Adam Arisoi admitted that bad weather had been the main challenge in the distribution of election logistics in the province and that there were always polling stations that could not conduct elections on schedule.

'€œWe cannot fight nature. That was the case during the presidential election. Heavy rain has been falling for all of June and into July,'€ Adam said.

Separately in Indramayu regency, West Java, polling station (TPS) 10 in Kalianyar subdistrict, Kerangkeng district, will hold a revote on Saturday as two voters were found to have cast two votes each.

West Java KPUD chairman Yayat Hidayat said that the two mothers did so because they were representing their children who were out of town on election day. Both the TPS officials and monitors let them do so.

The case, he said, was revealed when a third mother came to the TPS do the same but was refused by a new monitor who had replaced a previous one.

KPUD Indramayu chairman Mohammad Hadi Ramdan said that his office had prepared all the ballots and other necessities needed for Saturday'€™s revote.

'€œThe security measures and time are the same as in the Wednesday election. We really hope people will come to cast their votes,'€ Hadi was quoted as saying by Antara.

Meanwhile, in Kediri, East Java, a number of cases of vote-buying and other forms of fraud have been reported, with one involving TPS officials.