Indonesian Presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto. (Photo: AFP)Jakarta (VNA) - Indonesian DefenceMinister Prabowo Subianto on February 14 claimed victory in the first round ofthe archipelago's presidential election after preliminary results indicated hewas on course to be elected leader of the Southeast Asian country.
Unofficial counts surveying some vote-countingstations gave Prabowo over 55%, a majority that will make a runoff unnecessary.
However, he acknowledged that he mustwait for the announcement by the election commission and it will take about amonth for the official results to be released.
Speaking at a crowd in central Jakarta, Subiantosaid that all counts, all pollsters have showed figures that Prabowo-Gibran wonin one round, and this victory will be for all Indonesians.
More than 820,000 polling stations throughoutIndonesia opened simultaneously on February 14 morning for more than 204.8million eligible voters to cast their ballots in the country’s presidential,national and provincial elections.
Voting began at 7:00 a.m. and will end at 1:00p.m. on the same day. Votes will be counted at the polling stations onthe day.
As many as 24political parties, including 18 national and six regional inAceh, are racing in the election. The three candidates running forPresident are Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto, former Central Java governorGanjar Pranowo, and former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan.
The voting process has been supervised by the General Elections Commission (KPU),the General Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu),representatives of parties and localities, and internationalobservers./.
