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Two losing candidates try their luck in court
The Constitutional Court will have their hands full over the next couple of days as the campaign teams of the two losing presidential candidates will on Monday begin submitting their evidence of violations
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he Constitutional Court will have their hands full over the next couple of days as the campaign teams of the two losing presidential candidates will on Monday begin submitting their evidence of violations.
“We are going to submit our evidence to the Constitution Court on Monday,” Poempida Hidayatullah from Jusuf Kalla’s campaign team told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
“We are not planning to reduce the number of votes won by incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, but we are going to question the performance of the General Elections Commission (KPU), which has ruined democracy in our country,” he said.
Burhanuddin Napitupulu, also from Kalla’s team, said that the team would submit hard evidence that electoral roll fraud was committed.
“We found around 27 million voters were unable to vote due to mismanagement of the electoral role,” he said.
“We are going to accept whatever ruling the court issues, because we just want the nation and its future generations to remember how awful and chaotic this election was and to learn from it.”
Meanwhile, Ganjar Pranowo from the Megawati Sukarnoputri campaign team told the Post that his team would begin submitting its case to the court on Tuesday.
Another member of Megawati’s team, Gayus Lumbuun, said that his team would submit two batches of evidence.
“The first batch contains evidence that votes disappeared because of the KPU’s mismanagement of the electoral roll. The second batch details the poor performance of the KPU, which ruined the election,” he said.
“We believe there were many of our constituents who were unable to vote due to the mismanagement.”
The KPU’s official final vote count shows Yudhoyono secured re-election, winning 60.8 percent of
the votes.
Megawati from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and her running mate, Prabowo Subianto of the Greater Indonesian Movement Party (Gerindra), followed in second place with 26.8 percent.
Kalla, of the Golkar Party, and his running mate Wiranto, of the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura), came in third, with 12.4 percent.
Indonesian presidential election law stipulates that a candidate must win at least 50 percent of votes to avoid a run off election.
Gayus said that based on his team’s calculations, there was a possibility that Yudhoyono failed to get this 50 percent.
“Our calculation indicates that our votes have the potential to rise, while SBY’s could decline to lower than 50 percent,” he said.
“If the court approves our evidence and calculations, then we want the presidential election to continue into the second round,” he added.
Meanwhile, legal expert Todung Mulya Lubis told the Post that the court should annul the election
results because of the chaos caused by the mismanagement of the electoral roll.
“In democratic elections, every single vote is valuable. There is no justification at all for the castration of the constitutional right of any citizen,” he said. (hdt)
