Fears of fraud as Indonesia awaits presidential election results
With both candidates claiming victory in Indonesia's presidential elections, supporters and observers have voiced concern that fraud and dirty tactics could affect official results
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.
Former Jakarta governor Joko Widodo and his rival, ex-general Prabowo Subianto, used different unofficial tallies on Wednesday to claim victory in the world’s third-biggest democracy.
Now more than 130 million ballot papers from the vast archipelago are being counted and collected, and then sent on to the capital Jakarta. The official result will be announced by July 22.
“The most vulnerable part of the Indonesian election is the counting process.”
Both camps have sent hundreds of thousands of monitors to watch the process 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 reporters.
Analysts believe that Widodo, known by his nickname Jokowi and seen as a break from the autocratic Suharto era, has the more credible claim to victory, and as such is the most vulnerable of the two candidates to being targeted by such fraud.
At least eight polling agencies said he was leading Prabowo by between two and seven percentage points.
