I

ndonesia will have a new leader in the next two days, when the General Elections Commission (KPU) announces the results of its vote count in the July 9 presidential election.

These past few days have seen the public keep an eye on the ongoing real count, in which presidential candidate Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo and his running mate Jusuf Kalla have led the rival pair of Prabowo Subianto-Hatta Rajasa by a 5 percent margin. Just after the voting on election day, seven pollsters named Jokowi-Kalla the winner in their quick counts, but four others found that it was Prabowo-Hatta had triumphed.

As of Thursday, vote recapitulation data from the KPU revealed Jokowi-Kalla was in front with 51.3 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, kawalpemilu.org, an independent website that mirrors the KPU'€™s vote tabulation process, found that as of Thursday, Jokowi had secured over 66.9 million votes or 52.83 percent of the vote, with Prabowo gaining 47.17 percent, based on data from 99.26 percent of the archipelago'€™s 479,183 polling stations.

KPU commissioner Sigit Pamungkas said the website was an example of how the public could help ensure that the vote tally was free from vote rigging. '€œSome can guard the election by processing the raw data put forward by the KPU and turning it into a national vote-count result, or they can be present during the multilevel vote-tally process,'€ he said.

Although Prabowo has claimed that he would abide by the official election result, his legal team is reportedly still gearing up to challenge the final vote tabulation, scheduled to be announced by the KPU on July 22.

The legal team could challenge the election results at the Constitutional Court should the KPU declare a loss for Prabowo. The team would focus its lawsuit on three issues: vote buying, theft of recapitulation documents (C1 forms) in some regions and indications of public officials being partial to one of the candidates, as well as voters who cast their votes in locations where they did not reside, without proper documents.

As both camps insist they won the election, public pressure has mounted for Prabowo to concede defeat. Public figures '€” including renowned poet and journalist Goenawan Mohamad, movie director Joko Anwar and TV host Pandji Pragiwaksono '€” posted their concerns on the '€œSurat Untuk Pak Bowo'€ (Letters to Mr. Bowo) page on Tumblr, a blogging website.

Jokowi said he was ready to heal the bitter rivalry with the Prabowo-Hatta pair. '€œYou may call it reconciliation. Yes, we must preserve the spirit of unity,'€ he said.

Kalla, who won the 2004 election as the running mate of current President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, concurred. '€œFor the sake of our nation, we are ready for reconciliation [between the two camps],'€ said Kalla, adding that the form of reconciliation would be determined after the official final vote tally was announced.

The nation is eagerly awaiting July 22. We all hope that the losing side will accept the result and concede defeat, because we cannot afford to sacrifice the country'€™s future for someone'€™s ambition to rule.

Yet another piece of shocking news has come from the border of Ukraine and Russia as a Malaysia Airlines plane with 298 people onboard is believed to have been shot down.

The Associated Press quoted Anton Geraschenko, an adviser to Ukraine'€™s interior minister, as saying on his Facebook page that the plane was flying at an altitude of 10,000 meters, and that it was hit by a missile from a Buk launcher, which can fire missiles up to an altitude of 22,000 meters.

Malaysia Airlines said on its Twitter feed that it had '€œlost contact with MH17 from Amsterdam. The last known position was over Ukrainian airspace. More details to follow.'€ The plane was heading from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

It is the second time that tragedy has befallen a Malaysia Airlines plane in less than six months. Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared in March on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The whereabouts of the plane have still not been discovered.

Reuters quoted an emergency services rescue worker who said that at least 100 bodies had so far been found at the scene, which is near the village of Grabovo, and that debris from the wreckage was scattered across an area up to 15 kilometers in diameter. Broken pieces of the wings marked with blue and red paint were found among the wreckage.

Despite the blame game between the Ukrainian government and rebels regarding who shot the plane down, the world can only condemn such an attack against innocent people.

The soccer party is over. Germany emerged as world champion for the fourth time at the 2014 FIFA World Cup by defeating Argentina 1-0. It was not a victory built in a fortnight but instead after 10 years, according to coach Joachim Loew.

Brazil made a good host, despite the humiliating 1-7 defeat by Germany in the semifinals and 0-3 loss against the Netherlands in the playoff for third place. Brazil is now shifting its focus to a much grander multi-sporting event, the Olympic Games in 2016.

The World Cup showed the world that long-term commitment, hard work and science and technology need to be put together to create a winning team, as Germany has proven. And Indonesia should learn from the example, as we are still lagging far behind in becoming a champion at the Southeast Asian level.

'€” Primastuti Handayani