JAKARTA – Indonesian presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto said on Tuesday (May 21) he would not accept the election commission (KPU)’s official result showing he lost to incumbent President Joko Widodo at last month’s presidential election and would challenge it in the Constitutional Court, citing election fraud.

His comments came as Mr Joko expressed his desire to reach out to Mr Prabowo and his running-mate Sandiaga Uno in the spirit of democracy.

The election commission had earlier Tuesday released its final tally of ballots for the April 17 vote, which showed that Mr Joko, better known as Jokowi, had secured 55.5 per cent of the public vote against Mr Prabowo’s 44.5 per cent.

According to the results announced in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, Mr Joko and his vice-presidential candidate Ma’ruf Amin received 85,607,362 of the votes, or 11 percentage points more than the 68,650,239 votes cast for Mr Prabowo and his running-mate Sandiaga Uno.

The former army general, who had also lost to Mr Joko at the last presidential race in 2014, was defeated this time by more than double the votes he had garnered in that election.

“We had given chance to KPU to improve the whole process (of vote counting) so it would reflect an honest and fair election, but KPU did not follow this up, therefore we, the No. 2 presidential pair, reject all vote tabulation for the presidential election that was announced in the early hours of May 21,” Mr Prabowo told reporters at a press conference. 

The move to seek a legal avenue to contest the result was made following appeals from political parties that supported Mr Prabowo’s campaign.  

“We feel the timing of the announcement was in an awkward and out of ordinary timing,” he said of the vote count, which was released a day ahead of schedule. 

Mr Prabowo had claimed victory just hours after the polls closed on Election Day and has repeatedly made allegations of electoral fraud, saying his camp had gathered evidence to support his claims.

He has also called for public rallies to protest the official results. 

Mr Prabowo’s campaign team official Sufmi Dasco had also earlier said the former general would challenge the official election result in the Constitutional Court.

Indonesia has tightened security in the capital Jakarta in recent days to prevent any civil unrest amid plans by Islamist groups to mount protests against the results at the KPU headquarters.

The police have also detained dozens of militants and warned of a possible attack by terrorists loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), who may be targeting its officers as well as people during street rallies.

Mr Priyo Budi Santoso, a politician from the Berkarya party, which supported the Prabowo ticket said in the briefing that he had received reports that authorities have limited the movement of people travelling towards Jakarta to protest against KPU. 

“Members of the society were stopped and were not allowed to continue their journey towards Jakarta at the border in East Java, Central Java, Sumatra, Jambi, Madura, Tangerang. We are really concerned about this,” he said. 

Mr Prabowo has three days to lodge a challenge in the court, before the election panel will officially declare the winner. His move in 2014 to challenge his defeat to Mr Joko was rejected. 

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