Use legal mechanism to resolve electoral irregularities: Governor

West Sumatra Governor Irwan Prayitno called on his people to maintain unity in diversity amid the ongoing vote counting process, and suggested that those who find electoral irregularities resolve them using the legal mechanism.

"We thank all the parties who have contributed to the peaceful convening of the recent parliamentary and presidential elections in West Sumatra," he said here on Friday.

He explained that the vote counting process at the district/city level has been going on following its completion at the subdistrict level.

 

Ahead of the fasting month of Ramadan that likely begins on May 6, Irwan Prayitno reiterated his calls for maintaining unity among community members with different religious backgrounds.

"Let us forgive one another, and maintain unity so that we can carry out our fasting perfectly," he said.

On April 17, over 80 percent of the 192 million eligible voters across Indonesia had cast their ballot to elect representatives at the House of Representatives (DPR), Regional Representatives Council (DPD), as well as provincial and district/city legislative bodies.

The public also voted for their preferred presidential and vice presidential candidate pair at over 800 thousand polling stations across the archipelagic nation.

An exit poll conducted by the Prabowo-Sandi pair camp showed them bagging 55.4 percent of the votes, Coordinator of the pair's National Winning Body's spokespersons Dahnil Anzar Simanjuntak revealed.

Concurrently, quick count results extracted from several pollsters telecast live by several television stations indicated a steady gain for the Joko Widodo-Ma'ruf Amin pair, surpassing the Prabowo-Sandi pair.

Both camps look forward to the General Elections Commission's (KPU's) real count, as the final result is legally binding.

Hundreds of ulemas supporting the Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno pair congregated for the third time, or termed "Ijtima Ulama III", in Sentul, Bogor, West Java, on Wednesday, during which they issued five recommendations.

One of the recommendations underscored the ulemas' beliefs of structured, systematic, and massive electoral fraud during the recently concluded presidential elections. To this end, the ulemas have appealed to the Prabowo-Sandi pair's National Winning Body to adopt the necessary legal and procedural measures.

EDITED BY INE