TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The campaign team of incumbent candidate Joko Widodo or Jokowi prepared a total of 22 million witnesses to guard the 2019 presidential election. The team’s deputy director for witness affairs, Lukman Edi, explained the training for witnesses would kick off simultaneously tomorrow across 34 Indonesian provinces.

“The witnesses will not only be tasked to monitor [the election] on D-day of the voting but starting on when the 21-day open campaign begins,” said Lukman in Cemara Campaign Post, Jakarta, Wednesday, February 27.

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Lukman outlined the total figure 22 million is accumulated from 2 million witnesses in the voting stations (TPS) and 20 million witnesses outside the TPS that comes from 10 coalition parties.

The witnesses, he continued, will be assigned to report a copy of C1 Form noting the result of the voting in each TPS. “They will report C1 via our system, one step quicker than a system owned by KPU (General Election Commission). So we can obtain the election result earlier,” Lukman added.

The budget to deploy witnesses, Lukman mentioned, would be a responsibility of the coalition parties. “The central campaign team will cover some cost for witnesses and some other by regional campaign team independently,” he said.

DEWI NURITA