Banda Aceh, Aceh Darussalam (ANTARA) - Banda Aceh, Aceh Darussalam (ANTARA) - Some three thousand names were taken off the Official Voter List (DPT) of the 2019 legislative and presidential elections scheduled simultaneously across the nation's 34 provinces on April 17, 2019, an election body commissioner stated.

"We have, until now, removed some three thousand names from the DPT," Ilham Saputra, member of the General Election Commission (KPU), revealed here on Tuesday at a coordinating meeting to discuss preparations for the elections.

Acting Aceh Governor Nova, Director General of the Home Affairs Ministry Soedarmo, and mayors as well as district heads from regions across Aceh were present at the meeting.

"KPU personnel might have been careless and included (the names of) foreigners on the DPT. I confirm that currently no other foreigner is on the list," he clarified.

Saputra expressed hope that all stakeholders would continue to forge coordination to promote peaceful and successful elections in Indonesia's westernmost province of Aceh.

Meanwhile, Soedarmo, the director general for political and general administration affairs, expressed optimism that Aceh would witness peaceful and successful elections.

"In spite of Aceh being named a red zone in the implementation of the elections, I believe it will be one of the safest provinces," he noted.

In Jakarta, on Tuesday, the Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno campaign team had called on the KPU to fix the 2019 legislative and presidential elections' invalid or incorrect DPT and the findings of 17.5 million names on it.

"The KPU headquarters should, at the earliest, not only conduct matching and research through its personnel, but it must also conduct on-field validation and verification of the DPT data. If there is a will, there is a way," Agus Maksum, chairman of the team in charge of information and technology, stated at the Parliament Building, here, on Tuesday.

The team updated the KPU on its findings on March 1, 2019, but flaws were still found in the DPT and had yet to be fixed as promised by the KPU, he noted.

Tracing the list, the team found voters' data that was odd and not normal, such as voters with birth dates on January 1, July 1, and December 31 respectively, reaching 2.3 million, 9.8 million, and 5.4 million, he cited as examples.

"Such data is not normal and coming from invalid and duplicate data, as well as data that had yet to go through the matching and research processes. For instance, at one polling station, there is data of 228 people born on the same date. These weird facts exist in hundreds of polling stations, concentrating in certain regions," he remarked.

The challenger's team also found alleged duplication of data in Family Cards (KK) or Single Identity Numbers (NIK), thereby resulting in duplicated DPT, reaching millions, in five provinces in Java alone.

In fact, the team claimed to have found manipulated KK data.

"One KK has hundreds to up to thousand of names in Banyuwangi, Magelang, and others. This is a serious manipulation, as it runs counter to article 488 of Law No. 7 of 2017 on General Elections," he stated.




Translator: Irman Yusuf, Fardah
Editor: Eliswan Azly
Copyright © ANTARA 2019