Q

uick count results show only some 57 percent of voters in Bandung turned up to vote in the mayoral election as Ridwan Kamil and his running mate lead the count on Sunday.

The Indonesian Vote Network (JSI) deputy executive director, Fajar S. Tamim revealed that the results were based on quick count at 270 out of 4,118 polling stations.

The Bandung City General Elections Commission (KPU) chief, Apipudin admitted that he was disappointed with the quick count result showing that there was a low voter turnout.

He said the voting day on Sunday had been well prepared because it was not early in the month.

'€œSo there should have been no sociological excuse that residents are going out on Sunday. We believe the election day is already appropriate,'€ he said.

Besides, he added, the KPUD had spread the word on voting day by spending Rp 3.8 billion (US$380,000) from the total election budget of Rp 39 billion.

JSI found that Ridwan and his running mate M. Oded Dahnial gained 27,776 votes or 44.5 percent of 62,531 eligible votes.

Ridwan and Oded were nominated by the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and the Great Indonesia Movement (Gerindra) Party.

The Edi Siswadi and Erwan Setiawan ticket, supported by the Democrat Party (PD), Star and Crescent Party (PBB), the United Development Party (PPP) and the People'€™s Conscience (Hanura) Party is second with 10,991 (17.6 percent).

Edi was city secretary while Erwan is the city council speaker.

Ayi Vivananda and Nani Suryani are third with 9,590 votes (15.4 percent). This ticket was proposed by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and the National Mandate Party (PAN).

Independent Wahyudin Karnadinata and Tonny Appriliani received 5,023 votes, higher than the 4,938 votes acquired by the Golkar Party'€™s candidates.

Three other independent tickets received much smaller votes of under 3 percent.

Fajar said Ridwan and Oded enjoyed a rapid growth of
recognizability from the public, possibly thanks to publicity regarding the beef graft case and the PKS stance on fuel prices, and due to further graft cases in the city featuring numerous city officials.

Three months before the election, a JSI survey showed that Ayi and Nani had the highest recognizability at more than 60 percent.

'€œThe survey was conducted before graft cases handled by the KPK were revealed. Maybe this is why they suffered from such a huge degradation,'€ said Fajar, pointing to a number of Bandung city administration officials who had been named suspects and questioned by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

Nani is the wife of Bandung Mayor Dada Rosada, who has been questioned by the KPK.

The quick count used the multistage random sampling of 62,531 respondents with a sampling error of about 1 percent.