REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, BANDUNG - An political communication expert has urged the General Election Commission (KPU) not to postpone the July 22 election announcement.

"The postponement of the announcement of the results of national recapitulation of vote tallies would be interpreted differently by different members of society," Kunto Adi Wibowo from state Padjajaran University in Bandung, West Java, said on Saturday.

He made the statement in response to the Prabowo Subianto-Hatta Rajasa pair's request for the postponement of national vote tallies. The Prabowo-Hatta pair said it had called for the postponement because they thought there had been massive and systematic fraud during the vote on July 9, 2014.

Kunto said the postponement could escalate the potential for terror and horizontal conflict threats, despite the fact that a postponement is allowed by the law.

Kunto noted that the public haD already been informed about the presidential election, but if a postponement happened, the public's interest in participating would drop. He added that the people would think that the postponement was reflecting the interest of political elites to seek victory using undemocratic methods.

Kunto also said he thought it was the Prabowo-Hatta camp that had raised the issue of fraud, more than the Jokowi-JK camp, prior to the KPU's announcement of the results of the vote count. He noted that an increase in political communication about election fraud occurred following the results of recapitulation at provincial levels.

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