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Salatiga mayor gets ready to defend narrow electoral victory in court
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Looking ahead: Salatiga incumbent mayor Yuliyanto (fifth from left) and his running mate Muh Haris (center), together with Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) president Sohibul Iman (fifth from right), greet their supporters at a campaign event in Salatiga, Central Java, on Feb. 10. (Antara/Aloysius Jarot Nugroho)
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alatiga mayor Yuliyanto and deputy mayor M. Haris declared their victory in the 2017 mayoral election based on a quick count by pollster Media Survei Center Indonesia (MSCI), which suggested they beat rival candidate pair Agus Rudianto and Dance Iskak Palit by a slight margin.
The Yulianto-Haris (Yaris) campaign team said it was ready to fight any lawsuit filed with the Constitutional Court against the results of the election. It admitted that with only a narrow marring, there was a chance the pair might face a lawsuit filed by the Agus-Dance (Rudal) team.
“We are certain the result of the real count by the General Elections Commission (KPU) will not be far from the quick count result. A slight majority victory with a gap of no more than 2 percent, has a high potential to face a lawsuit from our rivals. We are ready to fight that,” the Yaris campaign team head Agus Pramono said on Thursday.
The MSCI quick count shows Yaris secured 50.71 percent of the vote, while Rudal got 49.29 percent. The incumbent candidates won 53,307 votes, just 1,500 more than their rivals.
Agus Pramono said he hoped the Rudal ticket could accept wholeheartedly the result of the election. He added that filing a lawsuit would not only take time but also trigger a non-conducive post-election political situation in the city.
“It is their right to file a lawsuit against us. But let’s wait and see. The KPU is still calculating [the votes],” Yuliyanto said. (ebf)
