The Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta) is awaiting the final results of the manual vote recount for the East Jakarta region, according to KPU Jakarta chairman Betty Epsilon Idroos.
The East Jakarta region's vote recount was expected to have been finished on Monday before the KPU Jakarta's plenary meeting was held, she told journalists here on Monday.
Idroos said the KPU Jakarta had actually set a target of completing the vote recount of the recent parliamentary and presidential elections for Sunday (May 12), but the East Jakarta region had not yet finished its recount. Therefore, the plenary meeting was delayed until Monday.
Meanwhile, the East Jakarta General Elections Commission chairman, Wage Wardana, said the manual vote recount conducted in 10 sub-districts were nearly concluded.
East Jakarta has more than 2.2 million eligible voters who cast their votes in 1,461 polling stations.
In another development, the Indonesian police and military are to deploy 32,000 personnel to safeguard the General Elections Commission (KPU) building ahead of the commission's official announcement on manual vote-recount results on May 22.
According to the National Police spokesman, Brig.Gen.Dedi Prasetyo, the security agency is to safeguard the KPU building two days before it announces the official results.
The deployment was aimed at anticipating attacks by terrorists who might use the moment of election announcements to trigger attacks.
"There have been indications. They (terrorists) could likely launch their attacks when crowds gather at the KPU building. We need to take anticipatory measures to prevent them from happening," he said.
As part of the standard operating procedures, the Cyber Crime Unit of the National Police's Criminal Investigation Department has collaborated with the Communication and Informatics Ministry and the Cyber Body and National Encryption Agency (BSSN) to monitor the contents of social media platforms.
On April 17, over 80 percent of the 192 million eligible voters across Indonesia had cast their ballots to elect representatives in 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 pairs at over 800,000 polling stations across the archipelagic nation.
(INE)
Editor: Fardah Assegaf
Copyright © ANTARA 2019
