Political allies of losing Indonesian presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto say they will start a special legislative committee to investigate his allegations of widespread vote fraud.
One day after Subianto said he would challenge the official election results in the country's constitutional court, members of his Red-White legislative coalition said they will propose the formation of a special committee in the House of Representatives (DPR).
They believe that the 2014 presidential election “was full of fraudulent practices.” The Red-White Coalition consists of a number of political parties that supported Subianto, including the Golkar Party and his own Great Indonesia Movement Party or Gerindra.
Senior legislator and Subianto supporter Agun Gunandjar said Wednesday the formation of a committee is a necessary step.
"The objectivity of the election commission can only be assured though a political mechanism like the formation of a special committee that has the power to summon all involved parties. Right now, the election commission has only raw data. There are observers, but the quality of their work is questionable at best judging from the great discrepancies between the number of registered voters and the votes that are actually given," said Gunandjar.
He added he is optimistic the committee will be launched because the Red-White coalition will have a majority of the seats in the incoming parliament, which will be sworn in at the beginning of October.
But Nasrullah, a member of the Indonesian Election Supervisory Body, denied the election was marred by massive frauds.
"The Prabowo-Hatta team has demanded that revote is done in more than 5,000 polling stations. The election supervisory board has to run a check before granting any revote. So far the election commission has finished checking 200 polling stations. They find some irregularities, and the board recommends that revote be carried out in 13 of the 200 polling stations in Jakarta," said Nasrullah.
The chairman of President-elect Joko Widodo's campaign, Cahyo Kumolo, defended the election commission, saying it has made every effort to be open, transparent and fair to both sides.
Widodo won 53 percent of the vote according to official results and will be sworn in on October 20.
This report was produced in collaboration with the VOA Indonesian service.
