The campaign team behind presidential hopeful Prabowo Subianto and his running mate Sandiaga Uno yesterday claimed there were irregularities in the final voter list for the April 17 presidential election, affecting 9 per cent of total voters.
The team said an inspection of voter data on the ground had uncovered cases of possible fraud.
The team's communications and media director Hashim Djojohadikusumo claimed it had found voters who shared the same names, some who had the same birth dates, as well as names of the dead and those ineligible to vote, including people under 17 years old, being registered as voters. It said the list involved up to 17.5 million voters.
The team had reported the matter to the General Elections Commission (KPU), which told The Straits Times it was looking into the matter.
Mr Hashim, the younger brother of Mr Prabowo, told a briefing that the irregularities, if unresolved, could lead to electoral fraud.
"There are serious questions about how this election is being run," he said, referring to what he called "dubious" and "invalid" data. Mr Hashim urged the KPU to check and revise its voter list quickly.
He said: "We are raising the issue because there's a legal implication. The law says if the government officials in charge of election administration do not take corrective actions based on legitimate information, they can face a criminal charge."
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All systems go for MRT Jakarta after free trial
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MRT LAUNCH
• MRT Jakarta went fully operational yesterday after a two-week free trial period.
• The MRT has been highly politicised, with President Joko Widodo lauded for his role in pushing the project through while he was Jakarta governor from 2012 to 2014.
• His detractors, however, say credit should go to others, such as Mr Fauzi Bowo, Mr Joko's predecessor who broke ground for the project, and Governor Anies Baswedan.
• Mr Fauzi is a member of the Democrats. Mr Anies is backed by Gerindra, which is among the parties behind the nomination of presidential hopeful Prabowo Subianto and his running mate Sandiaga Uno.
ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
• Mr Prabowo campaigned in Purwokerto, Central Java, yesterday, while Mr Joko was in Sentani, a small town in Papua, which was hit two weeks ago by flash floods that left 112 dead.
• "The faces of the children from Inpres Kemiri primary school in the Sentani district, Jayapura regency, still looked cheerful," Mr Joko posted on Instagram.
• The eastern-most province of Papua is rich in resources but its people are among the poorest in Indonesia.
• Though it has just 3.5 million voters, Papua remains a strategic electorate for Mr Joko, who won 73 per cent of the votes there in the 2014 polls.
• Today, Mr Joko will take his campaign to South Sumatra and Bengkulu. Mr Prabowo is heading to West Sumatra.
WHAT POLLS SAY?
• The President remains popular in Papua and nationally, with most pollsters giving him and his running mate Ma'ruf Amin a double-digit lead over their rivals.
More than 192 million people will cast their ballot in the April 17 elections, which will see a rematch between Mr Prabowo and President Joko Widodo, who is now running with cleric Ma'ruf Amin.
A survey last Thursday by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies showed Mr Joko and his running mate with 51.4 per cent of the votes, and Mr Prabowo and Mr Sandiaga behind on 33.3 per cent.
But another survey by the research arm of Kompas newspaper revealed that support for the Joko-Ma'ruf camp had slipped to 49.2 per cent last month, from 52.6 per cent in October. In contrast, the Prabowo-Sandiaga ticket had gained ground in the past few months, climbing nearly 5 percentage points to 37.4 per cent.
Mr Hashim said the campaign team's own surveys showed Mr Prabowo and Mr Sandiaga with more support than their rivals. However, he said, if the voter list issue is not addressed properly, it will result in the legitimacy of the election result being questioned.
"Supporters of Prabowo-Sandiaga won't accept the election result unless we get satisfactory answers," he said.
KPU's commissioner Viryan Azis said his team is checking the data at 2,092 polling stations across five provinces - Banten, West Java, Central Java, Yogyakarta and East Java - as agreed with the Prabowo-Sandiaga campaign team. The commission hopes to conclude the process this week.
"We have so far erased names of people who do not meet the requirements to vote, such as the deceased," he said.
Stressing that the number is not significant, he said more names may be dropped from the list, and the KPU will convey the results to the Prabowo-Sandiaga team.
As for people who shared the same birth dates, he said they were actually those who could not remember when they were born. And, in line with a rule set by the civil registry and population office, they provided a convenient date.
