Indonesia presidential election

Observers, Election Commission reject fraud claims

Article published on the 2009-07-09 Latest update 2009-07-11 11:09 TU

Supporters of Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono shave their heads in Makassar to celebrate his election win
(Photo: Reuters)

Indonesia's Election Commission (PKU) says that provisional results bear out claims that incumbent Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono won a landslide victory in Wednesday's presidential election. Despite losing candidate Megawati Sukarnoputri's claim of fraud, independent observers say that they poll was largely free and fair. 

"So far there is no evidence of systematic or massive fraud," Nico Harnjanto of Jakarta's Center for Strategic and International Studies told the AP news agency.

As of Thursday afternoon, Yudhoyono and his running mate Boediono were shown to have 61.66 per cent of the vote, against Megawati's 28.57 per cent and former Vice-President Jusuf Kalla's 9.77 per cent.

But the KPU stresses that these are preliminary findings and that definitive results will not be declared until 25 July. The data are based on reports from 104,000 out of total 450,000 polling stations and do not include findings from the more remote provinces, in islands and archpelagos such as Papua and Maluku and Kalimantan.

The 60 per cent win would make it almost certain that Yudhoyono would not have to go to a second round, although, as well as winning 50 per cent, a candidate must also win at least 20 per cent in every single province.

But Megawati described the vote as "pseudo-democracy" and her running mate, former special forces commander Prabowo Subianto, said he was preparing a legal challenge, citing another count by Indonesia Development Monitoring which put their ticket in the lead.

US Ambassador Cameron Hume has already congratulated Yudhoyono. The peaceful vote "demonstrared the commitment of Indonesians to their vibrant democracy," he said in a statement.

"Everyone accepts that there have been fundamental flaws with the electoral rolls," says Jakarta correspondent John Aglionby. "There are numerous cases of fictive voters, people's names not appearing who claimed that they had registered. In short it was a huge mess."

But the Constitutional Court ruled that anyone could vote on presentation of their identity papers at the polling station, he says, thus getting round most of the problems.

"What Megawati has not done is show any concrete evidence that there was actually fraud perpetrated in the voting process, as opposed to the registration process," says Aglionby.