REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA - Twenty-one non-governmental organizations have expressed their support to calls for an audit of survey institutes that have issued different results of the recent presidential election, which had led to confusion among the public.
In a press statement received on Friday, the NGOs grouped in the Coalition of Civil Communities said they supported the Indonesia Public Opinion Survey Associations (Persepis) decision to audit the results of quick vote counts released by the survey institutes. The coalition rejected every effort and action aimed at creating chaos and violence as they are anti-democratic, it stated.
The NGOs warned of an existing potential for foul play such as partisanship, mobilization of certain forces to justify horizontal conflicts, and hence, close monitoring and preventive efforts must be taken by all concerned state institutions. They also called for public participation in monitoring vote counting and recapitulation of vote tallies at all stages.
In the meantime, the government has been urged to remain neutral, while the General Elections Commission (KPU) and the Election Supervisory Board (Bawaslu) must safeguard the entire process of recapitulation until the final stage to assure that no fraud happens, it noted.
Votes cast at polling stations in the election on July 9 will be recapitulated at village, sub-district, district/city, provincial and central levels. The process is expected to be completed by July 22 when, based on the results of recapitulation, the KPU is scheduled to announce the official results of the election and its winner.
Members of the coalition include the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), the Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW), Imparsial, the Environment Forum (Walhi) and the Indonesia for Global Justice (IGJ).
Based on the results of their quick vote counts, the Indonesia Survey Institute (LSI), the Saiful Mujani Research & Consulting (SMRC), the Indikator Politik, the Populi Center, the Center of Strategic International Studies (CSIS), the Litbang Kompas, the Lingkaran Survey Indonesia, and the Pol tracking have declared the Joko Widodo-Jusuf Kalla ticket as the winner of the election.
In the meantime, the four survey institutes: Puskaptis, the Indonesia Research Center (IRC), the Lembaga Survei Nasional (LSN), and the Jaringan Suara Indonesia (JSI) have declared the Prabowo Subianto-Hatta Rajasa pair as the winner.
Three survey institutes that are members of Persepi, which declared different results of the election, failed to honor the invitation by the association on Thursday to tender explanation regarding their survey results.
"I have personally invited the executive director of Puskaptis and the leaders of two other survey institutes, but they failed to come," General Chairman of Persepi Nico Harjanto stated on Thursday.
Chairman of Persepis ethics council, Hamdi Muluk, reported that the results of quick vote counts should not vary substantially.
"If the results are different, moreover, if there a wide margin of difference, then we have every reason to suspect the concerned survey institutes. It is not impossible that samples are not taken randomly or have been taken deliberately so that they do not represent the true picture," Muluk pointed out.
He explained that if differences occurred, then the margin is normally small and is at 1.2 percent for two thousand samples or 0.6 to 0.7 percent for four thousand respondents.
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