March 20, 2024
JAKARTA – On the eve of the General Elections Commission’s (KPU) Wednesday deadline for the announcement of the 2024 presidential election results, the poll body had finished assessing returns from 36 of the country’s 38 provinces, with Papua and the Papua Highlands the only two remaining.
The results for the two easternmost provinces were to be finalized on Wednesday morning so that the KPU could announce the official results of last month’s election later in the day.
The poll body, which has been racing to finish the tiered tabulation process, certified the returns from West Java and Maluku on Tuesday.
West Java, with the biggest voter roll of any province, saw unusually slow returns owing to a protracted tabulation process in Bekasi regency that had caused concern that the poll body could miss its Wednesday announcement deadline.
The Tuesday tabulation of Maluku and West Java’s returns followed three other meetings the KPU had held since Sunday night to certify the returns from Central Papua and Southwest Papua, as well as from the Kuala Lumpur overseas election committee, which held a revote on March 10.
With 36 provinces and all of the overseas voting accounted for, the KPU’s central office still needs to certify the returns from Papua and the Papua Highlands before it can announce the final results.
The poll body had initially planned to do so on Tuesday night, but the tabulation did not finish on time as a result of “technical difficulties”, according to KPU central office commissioner Idham Holik.
“[On Tuesday] at 10 p.m. eastern Indonesian time, representatives from Papua and the Papua Highlands will depart from Sentani airport [in Jayapura, Papua,] on a chartered plane to Jakarta,” Idham told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday. “They are scheduled to attend our meetings to certify the provincial-level returns at 10 a.m. [on Wednesday].”
Read also: KPU races to finish vote tally
Idham added that the KPU would invite all three presidential candidate pairs along with representatives of the political parties participating in the legislative election to the announcement of the official nationwide results on Wednesday.
Comfortable lead
Gerindra Party patron Prabowo Subianto appeared to have won in West Java and Maluku.
Data from the vote tabulation showed that Prabowo and his running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka won 16.8 million votes in West Java, ahead of rivals Anies Baswedan and Muhaimin Iskandar with 9 million votes and Ganjar Pranowo and Mahfud MD with 2.8 million votes.
In Maluku, Prabowo won around 665,000 votes, followed by Anies with some 228,000 and Ganjar with around 186,000.
Prabowo had the greatest share of the vote in all but 2 of the 36 provinces with certified returns.
The defense minister appeared to have lost to Anies in Aceh and West Sumatra.
Read also: Battlegrounds tumble in favor of Prabowo, tally shows
Prabowo’s strong showing included upset victories in a few battleground provinces such as Central Java, widely regarded as the stronghold of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which backed Ganjar in the presidential election.
In Jakarta, the Prabowo-Gibran ticket led by a margin of just 40,000 votes against Anies, who served as governor of the capital from 2017 to 2022.
Demonstrations
Analysts said Prabowo’s likely win was made possible by the rebranding of his public persona and his choice to run alongside Gibran, the eldest son of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who remains popular in his final year in office.
But Prabowo’s rival camps – as well as activists and academic communities – say the election was marred by the misuse of state resources, voter intimidation and inflated vote numbers that benefited the Prabowo-Gibran ticket.
Read also: Losing camps ready to contest election results at court
Both Anies and Ganjar’s camps have said they plan to challenge the results at the Constitutional Court sometime after the KPU announces the official winners on Wednesday. The court is set to open a three-day registration period for electoral disputes this week.
A group of protesters has been staging demonstrations at the KPU’s Central Jakarta office and in front of the House of Representatives complex since Monday. Kompas.com reported that some demonstrators were carrying banners demanding Jokowi’s removal from office, while others were protesting the alleged election fraud.
The police deployed some 350 personnel to the KPU office and nearly 3,000 personnel to the House of Representatives complex in response to the protests.