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Khofifah-Mudjiono pair again submitted claim.

JAKARTA – East Java Election Commission (The Commission) reported the recapitulation result and the announcement of elected candidate pair for Governor of East Java to The Constitutional Court (The Court) in Jakarta, yesterday. “East Java election has been done so we will focus on the legislative election on April 9, 2009,” said the Chief of The Commission, Wahyudi Purnomo to the press in the Court, Jakarta, yesterday.

In the report, the Commission announced Khofifah Indar Parawansa-Mudjiono package received 7,626,757 votes; meanwhile Soekarwo-Saifullah Yusuf pair was ahead with 7,660,861 votes. The result was achieved after the Commission conducted the re-voting in Sampang and Bangkalan Regency, also a re-counting in Pamekasan.

The re-voting and re-counting was done following a claim from Khofifah-Mudjiono pair submitted to The Court. The claim was granted and the result was, The Court, in the decision on December 2, 2008 announced to repeat the second round election in Bangkalan dan Sampang within 60 days, and re-counting in Pamekasan within 30 days after The Court s decision was issued.

The re-election was done in Bangkalan and Sampang on last January 21; while the re-counting in Pamekasan was on December 28, 2008. The result went to Soekarwo-Saifullah leading by 40 thousands votes. With that recapitulation result, the Election Commission set Soekarwo-Mudjiono package as the winner of the election in East Java Province. Wahyudi claimed to be ready in dealing with the lawsuit submitted by Khofifah. “Up to this moment, I have not received the copy of the file. Yet, if it was objected again, what is the problem?” he said.

Khofifah-Mudjiono felt dissatisfied over the result of the election and the re-election because they still found some violations. As expected, this pair submitted a lawsuit about dispute over election result to The Court, yesterday, right after The Commission submitted their report.

Khofifah Indar Parawansa said that the lawsuit was filed again to The Court because she considered the process of election and re-election in those three regencies was still filled with deceits done in a structured, systemized and massive way. He took as an example the case in one of the villages in Sampang. In that village, her team found 282 voters with identical ID numbers between one voter and another. Khofifah also told about underage voters. "In Sampang, it reached 2.000," explained Khofifah as she submitted her file.

Khofifah said that East Java Election did not put any notes about the misconducts. "The recapitulation and the announcement were still carried out. Everyone was silent," she said. Actually the misconducts were significantly affected the democratic process nearing the legisltative election on April 2009.

Andi M. Asrun, Khofifah dan Mudjiono s Legal Counsel, said that the re-election in Bangkalan and Sampang also the re-counting in Pamekasan was legally void. In the pleading, they demanded not to include these three regencies in the recapitulation result of the regional election. If so, he said, “We are the winner." SUTARTO

Source: http://www.korantempo.com/korantempo/koran/2009/02/03/Nasional/krn.20090203.155631.id.html

Photo: Doc. CCRI PR/Wiwik BW

Translated by Yogi Djatnika / CCRI

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