http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/fraud-fears-as-indonesia/1254264.html

Fraud fears as Indonesia awaits end to presidential deadlock

With both presidential candidates declaring victory in Indonesia's knife-edge election this week, anxiety is growing that fraud and dirty tactics could twist official results due to be announced later this month.

JAKARTA: With both presidential candidates declaring victory in Indonesia's knife-edge election this week, anxiety is growing that fraud and dirty tactics could twist official results due to be announced later this month.

Jakarta governor Joko Widodo and his rival, former general Prabowo Subianto, used different unofficial tallies Wednesday to claim victory in the world's third-biggest democracy.

Now more than 130 million ballot papers from the vast archipelago that sprawls the distance of London to New York are being counted and collected, and then sent on to the capital Jakarta. The official result will be announced by July 22.

Both camps have sent hundreds of thousands of monitors to watch the ballots' each and every move in a country where vote-buying and the bribing of government officials is rampant.

"The most vulnerable part of the Indonesian election is the counting process," Jakarta-based independent analyst Paul Rowland told AFP.

Analysts believe that Widodo, known by his nickname Jokowi and seen as a break from the Suharto era, has the more credible claim to victory, and as such is the most vulnerable to being targeted by such fraud.

At least eight polling agencies said he was leading Prabowo by between two and seven percentage points.

Most of these survey institutes have accurately predicted the results of Indonesian national elections since 2004, including April's parliamentary polls.

Prabowo, a top military figure in Suharto's time who has admitted ordering the abduction of democracy activists before the strongman's downfall, relied on data from four less well-known polling agencies.

Widodo has urged his supporters across the country to closely monitor the vote-counting process and ensure it is "honest and clean without intervention by any parties".

Rowland said that Widodo was "challenging the local election officials to make sure they don't accept money to change the numbers".

There has been no suggestion that his opponents have tried to carry out any fraud.

Hashim Djojohadikusumo, Prabowo's enormously wealthy brother who has helped bankroll his campaign, insisted that the ex-general also felt his campaign was under threat from Widodo's team.

"Frankly we are quite worried... our votes are being threatened," he said.

"We are not the only ones with money."

For transparency, votes are counted in public at polling stations, sometimes in front of large crowds and party witnesses.

The votes are tallied on a form visible to onlookers, then handed to village chiefs before being collected at a higher administrative level and eventually making their way to Jakarta.

Even after the result is announced by the election commission, the loser can challenge it, and analysts say both candidates will likely do so if they do not emerge the victor.

Any challenge will go to the Constitutional Court, which must declare a winner by August 24, ahead of the inauguration of a new president in October.

The worst-case scenario following a decision by the commission or court is violence breaking out. The country was plagued by unrest during its transition to democracy in the late 1990s, but has enjoyed more than a decade of peace and stability.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called both candidates to his residence outside the capital late Wednesday following their declarations of victory, and urged them to restrain their supporters from staging celebratory parades.

Both camps claim that polling agencies have taken sides.

The four main pollsters used by the Prabowo camp are little known and are coming under increased scrutiny, with the body that oversees pollsters in Indonesia reportedly raising concerns about their results.

But more reputable agencies too have vocally sided with Widodo. Rizal Sukma, executive director of Jakarta-based think-tank the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, has advised his campaign.

However, Aaron Connelly, a research fellow at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute for International Policy, said: "I think we can say pretty clearly the results used by Prabowo are not from respected polling firms.

"They are not particularly well established and they don't have track records of accuracy like others do."

- AFP/nd



http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/11/world/asia/candidates-raise-specter-of-cheating-in-indonesia-presidential-vote.html?_r=0

Candidates Raise Specter of Cheating in Indonesian Presidential Election

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Political tensions in Indonesia rose on Thursday, a day after the country’s hotly contested presidential election, as the supporters of the two candidates raised fears about possible cheating during days of vote tallying.

Official vote counts in the far-flung archipelago always take weeks, but usually winners become quickly apparent through so-called quick counts, in which independent polling firms tally ballots from a sampling of polling places nationwide. Although the most respected of those companies indicated that Joko Widodo, the populist governor of Jakarta, had a lead of four to six percentage points, his opponent’s campaign has suggested those companies are biased.

The final vote tally must be announced no later than July 22.

Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE

Indonesian presidential candidate Joko Widodo and his wife after voting on Wednesday in Jakarta.Populist Hopeful Says He’s Likely Winner in Indonesia, Defeating Ex-GeneralJULY 9, 2014
On Thursday, Mr. Joko hardened his stance, saying unequivocally that he had won, rather than, as he said on Wednesday, that he appeared to have won. In a meeting with reporters after a news conference, he advised his opponent, Prabowo Subianto, a former army general, to prepare to concede defeat.

Mr. Prabowo’s camp fired back, accusing Mr. Joko of trying to hijack the country’s democracy by declaring victory so soon.

Mr. Prabowo’s campaign said he was winning and cited as evidence quick counts conducted by five polling firms that several analysts dismissed as being untested. According to those counts, the campaign said, Mr. Prabowo had an average lead of 2.5 percentage points.

The day’s political jockeying started with a news conference by Mr. Joko, who called on Mr. Prabowo “to be a gentleman and concede after the results are announced.”

A few hours later, Mr. Prabowo’s brother and chief adviser, Hashim Djojohadikusumo, met with foreign journalists across town and blasted Mr. Joko’s campaign for claiming likely victory only 95 minutes after polls had closed. At that time, the various quick counts had tabulated less than 30 percent of the vote.

“The Prabowo camp feels this is highly irresponsible and provocative,” Mr. Hashim said. “Many of our supporters were quite angry.”

Mr. Hashim also criticized members of Mr. Joko’s campaign for suggesting to reporters that if Mr. Joko lost, it would be because of cheating.

“To say that they are winning, and that if they lose it is because we cheated,” Mr. Hashim said, “is a hijacking of our democracy.”

Mr. Hashim, a wealthy entrepreneur, said that Mr. Joko’s campaign was also being supported by business tycoons capable of trying to sway election officials. “We’re not the only ones with money,” he said.

Mr. Prabowo did not hold a news conference on Thursday.

The stakes in the election are high, with Indonesians electing a new president for the first time in 10 years. Voters could hardly have been given a starker choice, at least in terms of style. Mr. Joko, a former small-town mayor and furniture exporter, is known for frequent walkabouts to meet constituents in a country where most politicians rule with greater aloofness.

Mr. Prabowo, who is more of an old-school Indonesian politician with a patriarchal style, has pitched himself as the more decisive of the two candidates. He also has ties to the country’s authoritarian past, having served in the military during the rule of his father-in-law at the time, Suharto, the former longtime Indonesian president. Mr. Joko, by comparison, is of a new generation of politicians who was not on the political scene during Mr. Suharto’s tenure.

Mr. Prabowo’s military past was also an issue in the campaign; he has been accused of numerous human rights abuses when he was commander of Indonesia’s Special Forces and later as head of the army’s strategic reserve command.

If the official results show a narrow margin of victory for either candidate, analysts said, it is likely that both of them would appeal some election results at the provincial and district levels to the Constitutional Court, increasing the time Indonesia is left in political limbo. The court has the authority to order recounts as well as revoting, if necessary.



http://theconversation.com/indonesias-presidential-race-enters-critical-time-to-guard-votes-29087

14 July 2014, 11.09am AEST
Indonesia’s presidential race enters critical time to guard votes

Since Indonesians cast their votes on Wednesday, the big question remains: who will be the official winner of the presidential election when the final count is declared on July 22? That both candidates claimed victory perplexes both Indonesians and international observers alike.

Had Jakarta governor Joko Widodo won because most quick count results show him winning the race? Or did former military general Prabowo Subianto, as there are also some pollsters that show him leading?

Irrespective of unofficial survey results, the most important thing right now is the official vote count being carried out by the Indonesia Election Commission.

Reading the quick count numbers

Survey agencies such as RRI (Republic of Indonesia Radio), Kompas research and development team, CSIS-Cyrus Network, Indikator Politik Indonesia, Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting and Poltracking stated that the candidate popularly known as Jokowi leads by an average of 52% of votes over Prabowo, who gained an average of 47% of votes.

Meanwhile, results by pollsters such as Puskaptis, the National Survey Institute (LSN), Indonesia Vote Network (JSI) and Indonesia Research Centre show Prabowo winning 50% votes to Jokowi, who garnered 49%.

If we look at the quick counts from pollsters that show Jokowi getting 5% more votes than Prabowo, with a 1% margin of error, we can confidently conclude that Jokowi won the presidency.

Results from survey centres such as LSN and JSI, which show Prabowo winning with a slim margin of 1-2% and a margin of error of 1-2% cannot be relied on. Under statistical principles, if the difference between the quick count results is around the same as the margin of error, we cannot really make any conclusions from the data.

A step-by-step counting process

The Election Commission is tallying all the votes cast in the vast archipelago. Under Indonesia’s 2008 law on the presidential and vice-presidential election, the commission will count the votes gradually, progressing from the districts to the provinces and finally the national level.

The commission is counting the votes from 478,685 polling stations across Indonesia. From the village level, the election commission will tabulate the numbers for the districts.

The counting process for the 6,890 districts runs from July 13 to 15. The district level vote counts will go up to 497 counting stations at the city and regency level. Their counting process is from July 16 to 17.

Counting continues to the provincial level on July 18 to 19 and finally goes to the nationwide vote count on July 20 to 22. The Election Commission will announce Indonesia’s president for the next five years on July 22.

Danger spots in counting process

Guarding the votes during this 12-day counting process is crucial.

From past experiences, especially in April’s legislative election, villages and districts are the most vulnerable areas for cheating to happen.

It takes six days to tabulate the votes at the villages to the district level. Electoral fraud is possible here for a number of reasons.

First, there are not enough field supervisors and election committee members compared to the number of villages and districts that need to be monitored. This results in a weak monitoring system.

Second, as the public loses interest in the counting process once the vote count goes up to the district level, there might be less public scrutiny. Third, there is a possibility of human error while entering data from the polling stations to the district level counting station.

There are also questions surrounding the integrity and independence of Election Commission staff on the ground. After evaluating the performance of its staff during the legislative election, the commission found cases of money politics, in which bribes were accepted to change the vote count.

The candidates' competing victory claims will mobilise the network of supporters of Prabowo and Jokowi from the ground up. Supporters from both camps might intimidate Election Commission staff, especially in the villages and districts. Senior commission staff at the city and regency levels should make sure that their teams in the villages and districts stay focused and independent.

Election Commission must assert authority

The Election Committee should continuously remind the public that its result is the final and official count. This is important to avoid potential conflicts among supporters of each candidates.

Due to the existence of poll results that show their candidate winning, each group of supporters might feel certain that the result that shows their candidate’s victory is the accurate one. To increase people’s trust in the official result, the commission should educate the people about the counting process.

Only by making sure that the counting process is free from fraud will the winner of the presidency announced on July 22 reflect the people’s choice.