Indonesia Kick Off Parliamentary Elections

Jakarta (Antara) - Indonesians cast their votes in parliamentary elections held simultaneously across the nation, which is the biggest democracy after India and the United States, on Wednesday. Some 185.8 million voters spread across thousands of islands that stretch some 4,800 km from east to west, are registered to vote in the largest and most complicated single-day poll in the world. There are more than 545 thousand polling booths, which open at 7am and close at 1pm, across the world's largest archipelago country. This year, 15 political parties, of which 12 are national and three are local, are participating in the elections. In the parliamentary elections, some 6,607 candidates were contesting for 560 seats in the House of Representatives (DPR). In addition, there will be elections to 132 seats of the Regional Representatives Council (DPD) at the national level, 2,112 of the provincial parliamentary (DPRD I) seats and 16,895 seats for the district/municipality-level legislative assemblies (DPRD II). Results are due on May 7 and 9. Indonesia holds its national general elections comprising the parliamentary elections on April 9 and then the presidential election on July 9, with a run-off election in September if no presidential candidate gets more than 50 per cent of the vote. (*)