Indonesia: Waiting for the final count
Immediately after the people cast their votes on April 17, 2019, there was a short period of uncertainty, after one presidential candidate claimed his victory several times in the race for the presidency. Acting as a real statesman, President Jokowi gave a short speech, in which in general he welcomed the "quick-count" results, but said he would wait for the formal decision by the Election Commission for the results of the real count. On the other hand, his opponent, while he lost in the quick count, claimed victory based on his own internal “real count". The situation was tense, and the Police Commander called several thousand police officers to Jakarta to boost the existing police forces in the capital.
As the time went by, the Election Commission, using its computer system, continuously published the results of the real count, and as of this writing, almost half (48.01%) of the recap documents from each polling station, known as C1 forms, are already keyed in into the system, showing 56.29% for the incumbent, President Joko Widodo, while the challenger received 43.71%. A number of prominent supporters who initially also claimed victory for the challenger eventually went quiet, especially when one of their prominent speakers was interrogated by the police because he was seen to be instigating “people power” to go against the “prospective formal outcome". The argument was meant to provoke unrest because the supporters of the challenger claimed the election was massively fraudulent.
While the processing of the real count by the system developed by the Election Commission is progressing fast, it is only meant as a leading indicator. The formal outcome of the real count is established manually in stages, from the polling stations recapped at the village level, and then recapped further at the sub-district level, then moved up to the district level and then, finally, at the provincial level. In the final stage, the recap votes from the provincial level will be summed up at the national level. The ultimate result of the final count is scheduled to be released on May 22, 2019. However, the formal result usually resembles the real count by the system very closely.
In the month prior to the election, the trade balance for March 2019 released by the Central Board of Statistics reported another surplus. Exports in March reached $14,026.4 million, up 11.71% month over month. However, they were down 10.01% year over year. Meanwhile, imports reached $13,486.2 million, an increase of 10.31% from the previous month, although they were lower year over year. Therefore, the trade balance for March 2019 registered a surplus of $540.2 million. The surplus in March brought the total trade balance for Q1 2019 to a deficit of $193.4 million.
The Central Board of Statistics also released the inflation report, which showed inflation of 0.11% for the month of March. With that performance, year-over-year inflation stood at 2.48%, a level below the target corridor of the Central Bank. Such mild inflation, together with the sanguine external balance, led the Central Bank to keep the benchmark interest rate at 6.00% at its monetary policy meeting in April 2019.
Now read on...
Register to sample a report