Sebastian Salang of the Indonesian Parliamentary Watchdog (Formappi) said there was a chance for the two defeated presidential candidates to win their election dispute case.

“The losing teams do have some solid proof regarding violations in several provinces. I am sure the Constitutional Court will rule in favor of holding election reruns in those provinces,” he said.

If the provinces in question are in Java, then it could be a significant blow to Yudhoyono’s real vote tally, Sebastian said.

“On the other hand, if those regions affected happen to be in Sumatra and Papua, then it will not be very significant in terms of reducing Yudhoyono’s total vote count.

“However, I want to stress here that the issue is not the significance of the tallies. The issue is the fulfillment of the people’s constitutional right to vote. So if there were violations, even if they were in less significant regions, the Constitutional Court must order an election rerun, and such a ruling must be obeyed,” Sebastian said.

Megawati Soekarnoputri from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle and Jusuf Kalla from the Golkar Party have deemed that the election was flawed because of massive violations that took place before and during the balloting day.

Meanwhile, other political analysts opined there was no way for the two defeated presidential candidates to have the presidential election repeated because they lacked evidence to back up their claims.

They claimed that violations, mainly in the mismanagement of the electoral roll, had cost them some 28 million votes, which in the end went in favor of incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of the Democratic Party. Yudhoyono won the election by obtaining some 60 percent of the vote. The law
stipulates that a candidate who garners more than 50 percent of the votes is automatically nominated the winner.

“Those candidates do not have authentic proof, quantity-wise or quality-wise. It is going to be very hard for the Constitutional Court to rule in their favor,” an expert from the Center for Electoral Reforms, Refly Harun, told reporters in Jakarta on Monday.

“Jusuf Kalla’s claim is the weakest. His team said Kalla had gained more votes than Megawati during the election, making him eligible to challenge Yudhoyono in a second round of the presidential election. However, strong evidence has yet to emerge from his team to back up their claims,” Refly added.

During the election Kalla garnered around 12 percent of the votes, while Megawati took around 25 percent.

“It is not going to be an easy task for Megawati either. Her team have continually gone over and over the issue of electoral roll mismanagement, without any significant, solid proof that all of the votes missing due to the mismanagement would have gone to Megawati,” Refly said.

Fachry Ali of the University of Indonesia told The Jakarta Post that the Constitutional Court would likely order a rerun of the presidential election if Megawati and Kalla presented strong evidence that they had lost 28 million votes because of massive and systemic electoral roll manipulation.

“Constitutional Court chief Mahfud MD has said Megawati’s team needs to be able to prove all of the missing votes would have gone to their candidate. In my opinion, it is going to be very difficult for them to do so,” he said.

The head of Megawati’s advocacy team, Arteria Dahlan, said his camp were preparing several alternatives should the Constitutional Court reject their case. (hdt)

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