The former army general vying for the Indonesian presidency on Sunday urged the elections commission to address possible voting irregularities, as one of his top allies alleged “cheating” and called for a delay in the release of official results. Former Suharto-era general Prabowo Subianto’s team repeated an assertion he’s made since the election that they had uncovered a number of irregularities in the polls. Indonesia’s national elections commission “guaranteed” that the process would be “clean and transparent,” Mr. Subianto said. “So we demand what has been promised by law.” Mr. Subianto said reports of irregularities needed to be resolved to ensure the count was legitimate. The official results are to be announced Tuesday. Failing to act on the claims of irregularities would call into question the legitimacy of the electoral process, Mr. Subianto added.
Mr. Prabowo and his rival, Jakarta Gov. Joko Widodo, both declared victory in the tightly contested race based on unofficial quick counts from different polling organizations, although the most historically accurate of those pollsters gave Mr. Widodo an edge of four to six percentage points.
Since the election, counting of all the ballots by private groups and thousands of volunteers has shown Mr. Widodo leading by a similar margin. The country’s national elections chief, Husni Kamil Manik, reaffirmed Sunday that the agency would proceed as planned to announce official results Tuesday.
Mr. Widodo said late Sunday that delaying the results would be illegal. “Why should it be delayed? The schedule must follow the law,” he said. A delay is “not what we want.”
Fadli Zon, the deputy chief of Mr. Subianto’s political party, didn’t offer any evidence of irregularities on Sunday, but claimed his team had collected evidence that around 5,800 polling stations in Jakarta alone had problems, such as “illegitimate” voters casting ballots.
Full Article: Delay being sought for release of Indonesia’s election results – WSJ.