APD | 119 polling booth attendants die from exhaustion in Indonesia elections

By APD writer Aditya Nugraha

JAKARTA, Apr.24 (APD) – Death among attendants serving the elections process in Indonesia has escalated to 119 while 548 others were treated in hospitals, an Indonesia General Elections Commission (KPU) Commissioner Viryan Aziz said on Tuesday.

“It makes a total of 667 elections attendants in 25 provinces have been affected,” he said in KPU office here, referring to escalating number of elections attendants collapsed during the developing vote counting process at the moment.

They died from extreme exhaustion related to their duties in organizing the elections in polling booths, manually counting the votes as well as administering official documents of elections results.

On Monday, KPU stated that death on elections attendants has reached 91 with 374 others were treated in hospitals in 19 provinces.

Indonesia President Joko Widodo has conveyed his condolences for families of the perished elections attendants over the passing of their relatives when they carried out their duties in elections process.

“I would say that they are fighter of democracy. They died in their duties,” the president said on Monday to respond large number of deaths among elections attendants.

 Many of those attendants have been working hard since the ballot casting day on April 17. Besides setting up polling stations, they were also obliged to count the vote right then.

Their jobs did not stop there as they had to transport the votes to district office for further recalculation until May 4. The recalculation process would be repeated again in regency and provincial levels before being sent to KPU office in Jakarta.

The KPU is scheduled to announce winner of the presidential election after it finishes the real count on all votes submitted from each provinces on May 22.

 2019 elections in Indonesia is regarded as the largest in the nation’s history with over 192 million eligible voters. It also marked as the most successful election in the country with over 82 percent participants from the whole listed voters figure.

 Indonesia allocated 24.8 trillion rupiah (about US$ 1.7 billion) to finance the elections that directly select presidential pairing and members of central and regional parliaments to serve from 2019 to 2024.

Some 809,500 polling stations were set up in 525 municipalities and regencies in 34 provinces across the country.  

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)