Democrat Party Chairman Accepts Pollsters' Quik Counts

Cikeas, W Java (Antara) - Democrat Party (PD) Chairman Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said here Wednesday that he respected the results of credible pollsters' quick counts on legislative election, which put his party in the fourth place. "With a belief and assumption that the results of quick vote counts will not be so different from the outcome of the real vote count, we accept the Democrat Party's gain," he told a press conference at his home here. Despite the fact that PD's vote gain in the quick vote counts was not high, he said he could accept it and believe that there were no election frauds in the parliamentary election. Yudhoyono, who is also incumbent president, also called on his party's cadres and supporters throughout the country to accept the fact and prepare for the best in the 2019 parliamentary election. "On the behalf of the Democrat Party, I congratulate the Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDIP), Golkar Party and Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) on their success in gaining relatively higher votes," he said. Yudhoyono also thanked the General Election Commission (KPU) and those involving in organizing the voting process and later counting the votes for their high dedication for the nation. Regarding the Democrat Party's gain, the preliminary result of quick vote count by two pollsters, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Cyrus Network, showed the party just gained 9.1 percent of votes. The ruling party's vote tally fell from 26.4 percent gained in the 2009 legislative election. The PDIP led the preliminary result of quick vote count with 18.6 percent, followed by Golkar with 14.6 percent, Gerindra Party with 11.9 percent and the Nation's Awakening Party (PKB) with 9.8 percent. The National Mandate Party finished sixth with 7.9 percent, followed by the United Development Party (PPP) with 6.8 percent, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) with 6.7 percent, the National Democrat Party (Nasdem) with 6.5 percent, the People's Conscience Party (Hanura) with 5.5 percent, the Crescent and Star Party (PBB) with 1.6 percent and the Indonesian Justice and Unity Party (PKPI) with 1.1 percent. The quick vote count was based on a random sampling method, with the quality of provisional random at 98.3 percent and the margin of error at 1 percent. The samples were taken from 2,000 polling stations in 77 electoral constituencies across Indonesia. (*) Reported by Panca Hari Prabowo