PEMILU: Traffic at two Indonesian polling centres under control

The traffic situation at two early voting centres for the 11th Indonesian Presidential General Election (Pemilu), namely the Indonesian Embassy, Jalan Tun Razak, and the Indonesian School at Lorong Tun Ismail, here were under control and the number of voters was expected to rise at noon today.

A spokesman of the Kuala Lumpur Traffic Police, when contacted by Bernama, said the traffic situation at the two locations was expected to become more congested as many Indonesian nationals were expected to go out and vote.

Police, however, had tightened control around the polling centres to ensure that the voting process went smoothly, he told Bernama here.

A total of 50,569 voters out of the 126,421 who were eligible to cast their votes were expected to do so in Kuala Lumpur today while another 10,000 would cast their ballot papers at the Indonesian Consulate in Johor Baharu.

On Sunday, the rest would cast their votes at four more Indonesian consulates namely in Penang, Kuching, Tawau and Kota Kinabalu, before vote counting would be carried out at all the voting centres on July 13, witnessed by a representative of the Indonesian Election Commission from Jakarta.

Previously, the Indonesian Ambassador to Malaysia, Herman Prayitno said there were 420,643 Indonesian nationals who resided in this country who had registered as voters.

A total of 246,626 voters residing outside Kuala Lumpur would vote by post with the ballot papers sent to them on June 27, while for the 47,596 voters working in factories or farms, voting would be carried out by the dropbox system with the ballot papers sent to the voters since Tuesday.

Meanwhile in JOHOR BAHARU, the Head of the Committee on the 11th Indonesian Presidential Election, Djudjur S.H Hutagalung, said a total of 336,000 Indonesian nationals in Johor, Melaka, Negeri Sembilan and Pahang were expected to cast their votes.

He said the figure included voters who would be using the "Drop Box" method and those casting their ballot papers at the polling centres.

"As at 8am today, a total of 10,268 voters using the "Drop Box" method had cast their votes since the Presidential Election 2014 began yesterday until tomorrow," he told Bernama at the Consulate General today.

The "Drop Box" method involved the sending of ballot papers by Presidential General Election workers at the Indonesian Consulate-General to settlements where Indonesian nationals had applied to discharge their responsibility through this method.

He said that for Indonesian nationals wishing to vote at the consulate office in Johor Baharu, they had until 10 pm today to discharge their responsibility.

According to Djudjur, 468 workers comprising the Indonesian Consulate General's staff in Johor Baharu and volunteers among students and the republic's nationals were involved in the Presidential Election 2014 process.

Vote counting would be carried out from July 9 to 14, said Djudjur who is also the Indonesian Deputy Consul General in Johor Baharu.