T

he South Tangerang Election Commission announced Thursday that the candidate ticket of Airin Rahmi Diany and Benyamin Davnie won the city’s first mayor election, which has been marred by allegations of fraud.

“The result is final,” head of the commission, Iman Perwira Bachsan, told a plenary meeting to finalize the ballot count from the city’s seven districts at the campus of Syarief Hidayatullah Islamic University in Ciputat Thursday.

The Airin-Benyamin ticket won 188.893 votes, or 46.43 percent of all votes, followed by Arsid-Andre Taulani with 187.778 (46.16 percent), Yayat Sudradjat-Norodom Sukarno with 5.56 percent and Rodiah Najibah-Sulaiman Yasin with 1.85 percent, according to tempointeraktif.com news portal.

However, the Arsid-Andre campaign team rejected the commission’s announcement, having previously alleged that the Nov. 13 election had been marred by fraud.

The team vowed to bring the case to the Constitutional Court.

Thursday’s final ballot counting was marred by street protests involving scores of people who demanded the KPU remain neutral and follow up on the allegations of fraud.

Dozens of police officers were seen guarding the ballot counting process.

After a three-and-a-half-hour plenary session Thursday, the KPU announced the number of spoiled ballots was 10,919 and the total number of valid ballots at 417,748.

Based on the KPU’s count, 57 percent of the 732,190 registered voters went to the polls.

South Tangerang, which comprises Ciputat, East Ciputat, Pamulang, Pondok Aren, Serpong, North Serpong and Setu districts was part of Tangerang regency until October 2008.

With a combined population of 1,037,000, the districts were grouped into a city that has seen robust growth in housing and trade and services.