Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s campaign team yesterday released its tally of the vote count in the recent election, confirming that he is on track to be re-elected with a comfortable margin of 12.36 percentage points ahead of his sole challenger, Mr Prabowo Subianto.

That result is similar to the interim count by the General Elections Commission (KPU) based on nearly 57 per cent of votes tallied.

Mr Joko secured 56.18 per cent of the vote and Mr Prabowo got 43.82 per cent based on 55.8 per cent of tallied ballots, the President’s campaign team chief Erick Thohir told a press briefing.

“This is the result. If the other side is saying we are cheating, I think there is another body to whom it can report,” he said, referring to the Election Supervisory Body.

He added: “But so far, I think, the election ran well, open and transparent. This is not perfect, but this is a good election.”

When asked why Mr Joko’s support did not significantly increase from the 2014 polls, Mr Erick replied: “If you look at some of the data of many elections in many countries, not many countries have one candidate winning by more than a single digit. So this is actually showing a good result for Mr Jokowi.”

As of yesterday afternoon, the official count based on 56.87 per cent of votes counted showed Mr Joko and his running mate Ma’ruf Amin garnering 56.05 per cent, and Mr Prabowo and his running mate Sandiaga Uno at 43.95 per cent.

Official results will be released by the commission by May 22, at the latest.

Quick counts by a dozen pollsters soon after the close of polling on April 17 have also shown the President to be ahead of his rival by around 9 percentage points.

Mr Prabowo has disputed the unofficial counts by the private pollsters, which were proven to be accurate in the last three elections.

The retired army general claimed victory twice on election day, citing the tally by his own campaign team.

Last week, Mr Prabowo’s team floated the idea of establishing a fact-finding team to prove what it alleged to be “a structured, systemic and massive network of fraud” in the recent vote.

Yesterday, it said its IT volunteer group would report thousands of incorrect data entries into the KPU’s vote counting platform.

A statement from the campaign team said 9,440 inaccurate data entries were discovered on the KPU’s real count website from April 27 to 29. The campaign team said it observed data from 42 per cent of polling stations nationwide and 6 per cent of the data observed was incorrect.

Mr Joko, better known as Jokowi, has asked the people, including his supporters, to be patient and to wait for the KPU to finish counting.

Mr Erick yesterday said Mr Joko’s stance revealed him to be “a true leader”.

Indonesia held its first simultaneous presidential and legislative elections on April 17, with more than 245,000 candidates vying for around 20,000 positions at the local and national levels.

The turnout was around 81 per cent of nearly 193 million registered voters, a number Mr Erick described as “a good result for any democratic country”.

Mr Joko’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), Golkar and Mr Prabowo’s Gerindra Party are leading in the vote tally for members of the House of Representatives.

Speaking at the same briefing yesterday, PDI-P secretary-general Hasto Kristiyanto said one of the priorities for the coalition that backed Mr Joko would be to move forward and focus on his agenda.

The coalition is expected to win 349 seats – or 60.7 per cent of the seats in Parliament – based on 52 per cent of ballots tallied.

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