PAPUA -- RESULTS ANNOUNCED IN KEY ELECTION

C O N F I D E N T I A L JAKARTA 001092 SIPDIS DEPT FOR EAP, EAP/MTS, EAP/MLS, EAP/ANP, DRL, DRL/AWH NSC FOR E.PHU E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/04/2018 TAGS: PGOV PINS KDEM ID SUBJECT: PAPUA -- RESULTS ANNOUNCED IN KEY ELECTION REF: JAKARTA 1006 AND PREVIOUS Classified By: Pol/C Joseph Legend Novak, reasons 1.4 (b+d). ¶1. (C) SUMMARY: Local election officials have announced a winner of a closely contested election in a key mining district in Papua, eastern Indonesia. The candidate of GOLKAR--the country's largest party--was named winner. Faced with angry supporters of the losing candidate, however, officials made the results provisional. The possibility of a protracted dispute over the results could lead to unrest in the already tense Mimika area, which is the site of a huge mining operation run by a U.S. firm. END SUMMARY. RESULTS IN PAPUA ELECTION ¶2. (SBU) Residents of Mimika district in south-central Papua voted May 19 for bupati (district regent) and vice bupati. The vote was the first-ever direct election of local officials in an area that is home to the giant Grasberg copper and gold mine operated by U.S. company Freeport-McMoRan. The voting occurred without incident. It took days, however, for the local election commission to tabulate the results, many of which came from rural areas of the sprawling, lightly populated region. To be extra careful (not that that really helped--see below),the election commission apparently counted and recounted the votes--one reason for the two-week delay in releasing the results. ¶3. (U) Election officials announced on June 2 that Klemen Tinal and running mate H. Abd Muis had won in a close vote. Tinal and Abd Muis, backed by a GOLKAR-led multi-party coalition, topped the PDI-P (Indonesian Party of Democratic Struggle) backed team of Yoseph Yopi Kilangin and Yohanes Helyanan by approximately 1400 votes. This slim margin is around two percent of the 84,000 ballots cast. THE LOSERS ARE ANGRY ¶4. (SBU) The results were immediately challenged by the losing team. Kilangin and Helyanan's supporters angrily condemned how the counting was done during a raucous public meeting with the local election commission. Faced with these objections, election officials said the results announced were "temporary." They did not, however, explain what this qualification meant. Nor did they outline subsequent steps they would take in order to finalize the results. SITUATION TENSE ¶5. (C) The situation in Mimika is tense. The local police are on a heightened state of alert and Freeport has advised its employees to avoid unnecessary trips into Timika (the capital of the district). ¶6. (C) Mimika has a long history of unrest and experienced a two-day riot in November 2007. Recent migrants--many of whom engage in illegal mining of Freeport's tailings--have occasionally clashed with long-time residents. Tensions between Papuan ethnic groups are also common and an on-and-off tribal conflict has raged in the highlands around Timika. The possibility of a protracted dispute over the election results could provoke more unrest in this already tense area. HEFFERN