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Polls big success both at home, abroad
Having lived in Indonesia for the past four years, Thai Catholic seminarian Dulpichai “Aot” Suwawat has seen two major elections and found significant improvements in the overall security situation, especially in Wednesday’s first-ever simultaneous elections
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span>Having lived in Indonesia for the past four years, Thai Catholic seminarian Dulpichai “Aot” Suwawat has seen two major elections and found significant improvements in the overall security situation, especially in Wednesday’s first-ever simultaneous elections.
Comparing it to the divisive gubernatorial election in Jakarta three years ago, the 26-year-old said he felt much more at ease this time around, despite the heated feuds between supporters of incumbent President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and his rival Prabowo Subianto.
“In 2016, I had to take off my cross necklace or not reveal I was a Catholic in public for fear of intimidation. However, I did not have to do that [during this election] because I felt safe,” Aot told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday, several hours after the nationwide vote had concluded.
Quick counts from eight pollsters, including Litbang Kompas and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies-Cyrus Network, showed Jokowi ahead with a lead amounting to around 10 percentage points.
Aot was not worried about possible protests from Prabowo’s camp, believing that authorities could keep a lid on these.
Nevertheless, his confidence may yet be tested as Prabowo claimed to have won the election on Wednesday while accusing pollsters of being partisan in their results.
The most complex single-day election in the world has been widely seen as a litmus test for democracy in Indonesia, amid concerns about the rising influence of conservative political Islam.
But for a foreigner like himself, Aot argued that this year’s battle between two Muslim presidential candidates had softened any potential blowback that might have otherwise occurred had minority faiths been involved.
Conversely, the 2016 gubernatorial election had pitted the Christian incumbent Basuki “BTP” Tjahaja Purnama, who is of Chinese descent, against two Muslim candidates: Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono and Anies Baswedan.
The latter challenger won the race with support from hardline Islamist groups and BTP was later jailed for blasphemy.
“I learned that in Indonesia, religion cannot be separated from politics,” Aot said.
Meanwhile, 21-year-old South Korean Cho Eun-seo only moved to Indonesia to study three months ago, just as the political situation in the country was heating up ahead of the election. But as a foreigner, Cho said she had encountered nothing disconcerting throughout the election process.
She said there had been no travel advisory from the South Korean Embassy in Jakarta.
Other embassies in the capital, such as those belonging of the United States and United Kingdom, did not issue any travel warnings or advisories on potential security threats ahead of or after Wednesday’s election. They merely advised their citizens to remain alert and avoid rallies.
Some foreign envoys, like British Ambassador Moazzam Malik, made impromptu visits to some polling stations in and around Jakarta and expressed optimism about the election.
“Visiting polling stations in a village near my residence. They were crowded and safe, and the elections went well,” he said in Indonesian on his Twitter account @MoazzamTMalik. “Indonesia must be able to vote wisely and peacefully for a better future.”
While counting continued to gain a more complete picture, overseas election committees (PPLNs) around the world held simultaneous vote recapitulations from early voting overseas, which concluded on Sunday.
At 7:50 p.m. Jakarta time on Wednesday, the committees had counted 19,212 ballots from 35 of 130 PPLNs globally. There are 2.05 million registered overseas voters in total.
Preliminary global results show that Prabowo trails Jokowi by 4,376 votes. Of the 19,122 votes counted, just 286 were deemed void.
The overseas recapitulation continues on Thursday in countries such as the US, which has large pockets of Indonesian voters.
Consulates general across the US started counting ballots on Wednesday morning local time, and are expected to finish on Thursday or Friday.
Billy Muchtar, the head of the PPLN in San Francisco, said his team of 19 people were expected to finish counting ballots on Thursday evening.
He said voter turnout in San Francisco reached 80 percent of the 7,971 registered voters, higher than the 69 percent turnout in the 2014 election.
“Enthusiasm ran really high with people standing outside our office,” Billy, told the Post over the phone on Tuesday.
He said 423 voters cast their ballots in the consulate general office on April 13, more than the 288 voters registered to cast their ballots there. He regretted that around 50 people were unable to vote because the office ran out of ballots.
In Tokyo, counting started as early as 1 p.m. local time, or two hours earlier than Jakarta. It took about six hours to verify 1,936 ballots collected from polling stations on Sunday.
In the presidential election, 1,342 voters favored Jokowi-Ma’aruf Amin, while the Prabowo-Sandiaga Uno ticket got 571 votes. The remaining 23 votes were invalid. Results from postal ballots were not available.
The sports hall of the Tokyo Indonesian School where the counting took place, was still jam-packed as of 9 p.m., with the committee only starting to verify the votes for the legislative election.
According to Makmur Lubis, head of the PPLN that oversees the Kanto region, the team had to be doubled to six people to expedite the work.
“We didn’t have enough people to count nor did we have verified witnesses from political parties for either the presidential or legislative elections,” he said.
