SBY's farewell party starts after Mulyani arrives

A farewell party for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Cabinet began right after Finance Minister and Acting Coordinating Minister for the Economy Sri Mulyani Indrawati arrived on Friday.

Former and current cabinet members were already present when Sri Mulyani, who is close to Yudhoyono, showed up 15 minutes later than the scheduled time of 1:30 p.m.

Yudhoyono is holding a farewell for his Indonesia United Cabinet, which will end its term officially next Tuesday, at the State Palace.

The ceremony proceedings started with lunch.

Among those present are former National Police chief (Ret.) Gen. Sutanto and current National Police chief Gen. Bambang Hendarso Danuri, former state minister for disadvantaged regions Syaifullah Yusuf, former home affairs minister Ma'aruf and former minister for state enterprises Sugiharto.

Some former top officials, however, were absent. They include former state secretary Yusril Ihza Mahendra, former law and human rights minister Hamid Awaluddin, who is now Indonesian Ambassador to Russia, and former general attorney Abdurrahman Saleh, who is now Indonesian Ambassador to Denmark.

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Moslem Australian

The Malaysian government has agreed to let Muslims attend a concert by U.S. hip-hop stars Black Eyed Peas, reversing an earlier ban imposed because the show is sponsored by an alcoholic beverage company, officials said Wednesday.

Ticket sales opened to Muslims on Wednesday for the Sept. 25 show, backed by Irish beer giant Guinness, said Bonor Seen, marketing manager for organizer Artiste World Entertainment.

A Culture Ministry official, who declined to be named citing ministry policy, said the ban was lifted late last week and a letter was sent to the organizer.

She did not give further details or say why the government lifted the ban, which had caused an outcry in the Muslim-majority nation.


The protest reflects growing conflicts between moderate and conservative Muslims, including many occupying positions of power in the government and judiciary, in a country that has long been considered a moderate society in the Islamic world.

Government regulations forbid alcohol companies from organizing public concerts. But this one - part of worldwide celebrations marking the 250th anniversary of Guinness' flagship brewery in Dublin - was allowed in order to boost tourism, although with the initial condition that Muslims would be kept away.

The controversy is the latest over alcohol in Malaysia, where 60 percent of the 28 million people are Muslims who are governed by Islamic Shariah laws. Ethnic Chinese, Indians and other non-Muslims are governed by civil laws and can buy and drink alcohol.

Although Islamic laws forbid the consumption of alcohol, it is considered a punishable offense only in three of Malaysia's 13 states. A Muslim woman who drank beer in public in one of those states was sentenced to caning by an Islamic court in July, a punishment that also upset many moderate Muslims. Authorities later agreed to review the penalty.

Uncertainty over the Black Eyed Peas concert was not a first for Galaxy, the parent company of Artiste World Entertainment.

Last year the government threatened to put off a Galaxy-organized concert by Canadian pop-rock star Avril Lavigne though in the end it went ahead.

Shows by Lavigne and other artists such as Gwen Stefani have faced protests by conservative Muslims over immodest clothing, forcing the artists to don attire that revealed little skin. While Lavigne and Stefani performed, other artists have shunned Malaysia.

The Black Eyed Peas have topped Billboard's Hot 100 singles charts for the past 20 consecutive weeks, the most ever by an act.

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Polling body begins vote counting

The General Election Commission conducted on Wednesday a vote count via text message, reaffirming the results of quick counts that gave a majority victory to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his running mate Boediono.

According to the KPU’s “quick count”, the SBY-Boediono won 60 percent of votes, the Megawati-Prabowo ticket 29.67 percent and the JK-Wiranto 9.62 percent.

The KPU’s results mirrors those that came from several institutions doing quick counts such as Lembaga Survey Indonesia (the Indonesian Survey Institute), Institute of Economic and Social Studies and Development (LP3S) and Indonesian Survey Circle (LSI).

Andi Nurpati, a KPU member handling the KPU’s quick count, stressed that the results showed at the KPU’s voting tabulation site (tnp.kpu.go.id/pilpres200907/sms/static/), which was provided in cooperation with the help from the International Foundation for Electoral System (IFES) and launched late Wednesday evening at the KPU office in Jakarta.

As of Wednesday evening, the polling body gathered only about 4 million votes out of about 40,000 text messages from poll officers spread around the nation.

“The results is only 40,000-something out of about 104,000 poll officers who have already been registered by the KPU,” she said.

“We will continue receiving their text messages and update the Website as we receive them. Currently, there is no deadline on when all the results must be in so just keep on checking periodically.”

However, that the KPU only had 4 million votes from about 40,000 polling stations signals an immensely low voter turn-out as each polling station takes a maximum of 800 voters, which translates to more than 20 million voters, or about 16 million voters missing from the count.

Another KPU member, Abdul Aziz, said the results shown in the vote tabulation was not meant to be a reference because the number shown in the site came from text messages, which may have been inputted incorrectly, while other messages may have not been deemed accurate enough to show in the site.

“We have an internal mechanism to filter these results, but this is still not the most reliable result.

The most reliable result will be the manual counting, which we plan to do gradually beginning on July 22 up to July 24,” he said, adding the manual vote-counting began from the polling stations nationwide soon after the ballotin and continued with a recapitulation starting from subdistrict to provincial level.

As of 9 p.m., the tabulation results from text messages have not changed.

The SBY–Boediono pair received about 2.48 million votes, the Megawati–Prabowo pair 1.2 million votes and the Kalla–Wiranto pair received a little less than 400,000 votes.



KPU’s schedule for the presidential election:

• July 8: Voting Day
• July 9 - July 10: Poll workers (KPPS) count the results from within their respective polling stations.
• July 10 - July 15: Vote-counting at the district level nationwide.
• July 16 – July 18: Vote-counting by the local general election committee at the regency/municipality level nationwide.
• July 19 – July 21: Vote-counting at the provincial level in 33 provinces.
• July 22 – July 24: The General Election Commission (KPU) will calculate the vote count from all across the country.
• July 25 – July 27: The KPU announces president-elect on July 25 and gives three days to the losers to accept the election’s results or not. This announcement is made only if the winner grabs a single majority.
• July 28-Aug.11: Settlements of election conflicts.
• Aug. 1-12: Officiating of election results.
• Oct. 20: President- and Vice President-elect are sworn in.

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SBY leads election based on KPU’s message count

The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Thu, 07/09/2009 3:28 PM | Presidential Election
Matching the unofficial quick counts, the General Elections Commission’s (KPU) short messaging service-based vote tabulation reveals that incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) leads the pack.

As of Thursday afternoon, SBY and his running mate Boediono had secured 61.66 percent of around 18.7 million votes counted. Megawati Soekarnoputri and Prabowo Subianto trailed a distant second with 28.57 percent, and Jusuf Kalla and Wiranto with 9.77 percent.

The KPU however said the tabulation did not necessarily reflect the official vote results, which are not expected until July 25.

“This [vote tally] is preliminary and is not official as it has to follow a certain verification procedure. This preliminary data should in no way be considered representative of the national or official results,” the KPU said in its disclaimer.

The tabulation was conducted in around 104,000 out of a total of 450,000 polling stations across the archipelago, each sending vote count results to a KPU database center in Jakarta on Wednesday.

As of Thursday afternoon, the data had come from polling stations in 28 provinces, only those from the remote provinces of Papua, West Papua, Maluku, North Maluku, and East Kalimantan have not filed the results. (dre)

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Megawati challenges quick count results

Dicky Christanto , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Thu, 07/09/2009 2:33 PM | Headlines

The presidential candidate from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), Megawati Sukarnoputri, challenged the validity of quick count results and said they reflected an imperfect democracy.

"A perfect democracy must not contain any indications of fraud," Megawati said during a televised interview with TVOne in Jakarta on Wednesday.

"How can we say the election has been done properly if I still receive reports about 10 million unregistered voters?

"The joyous process of the election and democracy only looks good on TV, but in reality we are now experiencing a pseudo-democracy."

Unofficial quick count results for Wednesday's presidential election from various institutions showed that incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) from the Democratic Party (PD) and his running mate, former Bank Indonesia governor, Boediono, have likely won in one round by garnering more than 50 percent of votes.

Megawati was in distant second with some 25 percent of votes, while incumbent Vice President Jusuf Kalla from the Golkar Party has possibly won only 12 percent.

The PDI-P and Golkar have been questioning the validity of the election due to recent initial findings by a special committee of the House of Representatives.

The committee, specially assigned to investigate the validity of the electoral roll, recently said the General Elections Commission (KPU) failed to enlist around 49 million eligible voters on the roll.

The Constitutional Court then ruled Monday that unregistered, eligible voters could use their ID cards to cast their ballots.

Commenting on the election, political observer Maswadi Rauf of the University of Indonesia said that election stakeholders should be grateful for the ruling.

"Without the ruling we might face the threat of the election postponement due to the poor electoral roll process," he told The Jakarta Post.

However, he also expected a further yet thorough investigation regarding the complaints of several indications of mismanagement reported during the election process.

"We should encourage the KPU and the Election Supervisory Body *Bawaslu* to conduct a joint investigation toward various indications of irregularities."

It was reported from a hospital in Makassar, South Sulawesi, that thousands of patients and hospital employees could not vote because the local branches of the KPU did not facilitate the process for them.

Dozens of inmates in Pacitan, East Java, were also unable to votebecause there was no polling station available at the correctional center.

The head of the Research Institute for Democracy and a Prosperous State (Pedoman), Fadjroel Rachman, said the electoral roll mismanagement was a major stain that needed to be wiped away in future elections.

"The court's ruling saved a lot of unregistered voters' constitutional rights for the time being.

"Therefore, we must learn from this incident.

"We must do our best to prevent the same mismanagement from happening again in the future."

Nevertheless, he said, SBY was the winner of the election although the true winners were the people.

"SBY should now remember that he has a lot of homework to do, especially regarding the resolution of past human rights violations and the investigation into the corruption done by Soeharto and his chronies." (hdt)

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SBY-Boediono: President of Indonesia 2009-2014 Version Quick Count

Results from several institutions that conduct the surveys fast indonesia 2009 presidential election can be concluded that the election in 2009 only lasted one lap only. SBY-pair is able to reach sound Boediono reached 60%, far superior compared to pair-Megawati, Prabowo and Wiranto JK. With the results of the calculation is fast SBY-capable Boediono eligible 50% plus 1 vote, and the distribution of SBY-Boediono far exceeded the constitutional requirement of a presidential election cycles to get the sound that is at least 20% in 50% more provinces across the country.

SBY victory pair Boediono in quick-count has not been absolute, and however the authorities announced in this case is the KPU. But from the results of previous surveys conducted by several institutions in the survey, the results that they quickly get melenceng not far from the man who made the KPU.

One of the institutions that make the fast, Information Research Institute (LRI) states disperse themselves. This is because they have previously predicts that the presidential election will be held in two rounds and says ready to disband if the prediction is wrong. And that pair of SBY-winning Boediono absolute top competitors-competitors. They also eventually disband because states are failing and not berkompeten in this calculation.

Next results quickly survey some of the institution:

1. Information Research Institute (LRI)

Megawati, Prabowo: 27.10%
SBY-Boediono: 61.09%
JK-Wiranto: 11.81%

2. Indonesia circle Surveys

Megawati, Prabowo: 27.27%
SBY-Boediono: 60.17%
JK-Wiranto: 12.55%

3. Research, Education and The Economic and Social (LP3ES)

Megawati, Prabowo: 27.40%
SBY-Boediono: 60.28%
JK-Wiranto: 12.32%

4. Center of Research and Development Strategic Policy (Puskaptis)

Megawati, Prabowo: 28.16%
SBY-Boediono: 57.94%
JK-Wiranto: 13.89%

5. Surveys Indonesia Institute (LSI)

Megawati, Prabowo: 26.57%
SBY-Boediono: 60.82%
JK-Wiranto: 12.61%


taken from : http://japraxxx.blogspot.com/2009/07/sby-boediono-presiden-indonesia-2009.html

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