Quick Count Results Potential To Split People: Rector

Padang, W Sumatra, July 11 (Antara) - A university rector warned that the presidential election quick count results could trigger communal conflict between supporters of the two presidential candidates. Yanuar Kiram, rector of the Padang State University (UNP) said the results of quick counts by two groups of survey agencies broadcast by two politically opposing television stations have confused the people. Quick counts by a group of 8 survey agencies broadcast by Metro TV showed that Joko Widodo (Jokowi) and his running mate Jusuf Kalla (JK) won the presidential race with a margin of 4 top 5 percent. On the contrary quick counts by four other survey agencies broadcast by TV ONE showed that Prabowo Subianto and his running mate Hatta Rajasa were the winners. Metro TV is owned by Surya Paloh, who is the chairman and founder of Nasdem Party which supports Jokowi-JK and TV ONE is owned by Abu Rizal Bakrie , the general chairman of the Golkar Party which threw its support to the rival candidate Prabowo. Yanuar Kiram said the quick count results have formed public opinions and at the same time confusing the people. Quick counts broadcast by TV stations , which (politically) opposing each other would further split the people, he said here on Friday. He said he hoped the people would be smart enough not to be influenced too much by the results of the quick counts. "The law says the decision as to who is to be the next president would be announced by the Election Commission (KPU) based on manual counting," he said. The people should be patient to wait until the KPU makes the official announcement on July 22, eh said. Yanuar Kiram, however, believed some of the quick counts are highly credible carried out by highly professional survey agencies with results not much different from the real count. The difficulty is which of them are credible as both presidential candidates claimed victory, he added. "It is safer for us to support KPU and wait until it announces the final result," he said. He called on the people not to count to much on the quick counts and get emotional about it. Meanwhile , the Indonesian Association of Public Opinion Surveys (Persepi) has expressed suspicion of the quick counts by four survey agencies -- Study Center for Strategic Development and Policy (Puskaptis), Indonesia Research Center (IRC) , National Survey Agency (LSN) and Indonesian Voice Networks (JSI). The quick counts by the four agencies gave victory to the Prabowo-Hatta camp. Persepi Chairman Nico Harjanto told the newspaper Media Indonesia here on Thursday,"The result of surveys by the four agencies are suspicious especially that of Puskaptis. Other agencies used the standard method of multistage random with samples from at least 2,000 ballot boxes; on the contrary, the four agencies took samples from only 1,250 ballot boxes. Error possibility would be less than 1 percent if the samples are from 2,000 ballot boxes but the error could be more than 1 percent if the samples are from less than 2,000 ballot boxes, Nico said. Puskaptis Executive Director Husin Yazid dismissed the suspicion directed toward his survey agency saying Puskaptis is independent and used its own money Rp1.2 billion in the surveys. "No fund (received) from certain party to finance the survey. We have our own fund," he said. Pukaptis, however, has been reported to have had bad survey record . Bima Arya Sugiarto, Chairman of the expert team for the presidential candidate Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in previous election in 2009, was quoted as saying Puskaptis had often made a mistake. Bima cited regional election in West Java in which Puskaptis predicted Danny Setiawan would win the gubernatorial election but the real count by KPU proved that Ahmad Heryawan was the winner. In Palembang, South Sumatra, police had to protect Puskaptis leaders from angry people, who suspected them to have announced false figure of votes from gubernatorial election in September 2013. Jusuf Kalla, the running mate of Jokowi was quoted as saying that Puskaptis had offered to form a public opinion through a series of unconfirmed surveys. "Yes he offered us survey service, but we rejected because the price was too high," JK was quoted as saying.