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Jakarta Post

Democracy is the real loser: Prabowo

Gerindra Party chairman and presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto presented a litany of alleged election violations to members of the foreign press at a closed briefing on Monday, claiming that the opposing camp had engaged in structured, systematic and massive fraud

Karina M. Tehusijarana (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Tue, May 7, 2019

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Democracy is the real loser: Prabowo

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span>Gerindra Party chairman and presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto presented a litany of alleged election violations to members of the foreign press at a closed briefing on Monday, claiming that the opposing camp had engaged in structured, systematic and massive fraud.

The briefing, which was held at Prabowo’s residence on Jl. Kertanegara in South Jakarta on Monday evening, was closed to local media outlets, including The Jakarta Post.

Since polls closed on April 17, Prabowo has declared victory multiple times, despite quick counts from established pollsters projecting that Joko “Jokowi” Widodo had won the election with 54 to 55 percent of the vote.

In the past few weeks, the Prabowo camp has claimed that it had evidence of massive cheating and election fraud and has submitted a report to the Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) detailing 73,715 instances of miscounting that has been alleged as fraud in the General Elections Commission’s (KPU) vote-count information system (Situng).

From the Post’s observation, there were 34 names on the guest list, which included journalists from foreign newspapers, television stations and online news publications, as well as officials from several foreign embassies.

According to an invitation seen by the Post, the speakers at the briefing — titled “2019 Elections: Proof of Fraud and What it Means for Indonesia’s Democracy” — included Prabowo himself, Prabowo supporter and former minister Rizal Ramli, as well as Prabowo campaign director Sugiono.

Prabowo’s running mate Sandiaga Uno, campaign adviser and National Mandate Party (PAN) patron Amien Rais, and campaign team member Sudirman Said were also present.

“What we are asking for is a correction of all the irregularities. We want an IT audit. It’s as simple as that. All these false entries must be corrected. That’s all we ask,” said Prabowo in the forum as quoted by The Straits Times.

According to presentation materials seen by the Post, the briefing included a detailed list of alleged violations, ranging from administrative issues such as data entry mistakes to indications that regional heads and civil servants had pressured voters to cast their ballots for President Jokowi.

The materials also displayed a pie chart of the vote count from the website Jurdil2019.com, which showed that Prabowo had won the election by 59.7 percent. The website had previously been removed from Bawaslu’s list of approved election monitors for allegedly showing bias toward the Prabowo-Sandiaga ticket.

Unlike other registered pollsters or crowdsourced websites that gather volunteers to upload vote tallies from polling stations, Jurdil2019.com has not been transparent in its counting process.

One of the pages of the release given to the foreign press had the heading “Democracy is the real loser”. The last four pages included a long list of links to press clippings allegedly showing instances of election fraud that disadvantaged the Prabowo-Sandiaga ticket.

The briefing was held amid apparent discord in the Prabowo camp, with executives of Prabowo coalition members the PAN, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and the Democratic Party apparently showing misgivings about Prabowo’s claims of victory.

Democratic Party executive Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono met with Jokowi on Thursday, while PAN secretary-general Eddy Soeparno has said the party would evaluate its political alliances after the KPU announces the official election results on May 22.

PKS executive Mardani Ali Sera, one of the founders of the vocally anti-Jokowi #2019GantiPresiden (#2019ChangePresident) movement, said on Friday that the hashtag had been retired.

Gerindra politician and Prabowo campaign spokesman Andre Rosiade remained adamant that the Prabowo camp could prove that the Prabowo-Sandiaga ticket was the rightful winner of the election.

“Do not simplify it as if the violations were only during the vote-casting and vote-counting process,” he said. “There are indications that regents, village heads and civil servants were ordered to help Jokowi win.”

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