For the judges at the Constitutional Court, it was just another day. The lines and rows of witnesses are usual sights in the hearings of regional electoral disputes that the court had been handling in the last few months.

With more than 110 cases to hear since January this year, and with experience from past election cases, the court has identified certain modus operandi used by people who expect a change of the election results.

Constitutional Court chief justice Mahfud MD said earlier this month that the patterns (of the cases) are the same; vote buying, problems with electoral rolls, abuse of structural power and (other) frauds.

“It gets boring [to handle the cases]. There is no challenge,” he added.

Mahfud was quick to add his support to the Home Ministry which proposes that any regional electoral disputes should  be handled by local high courts rather than by the Constitutional Court.

Home Minister Gamawan Fauzi had previously proposed to move the authority dealing with the regional election disputes to courts in respective regions in order to cut costs for regional elections. He also said that doing so would prevent cases from piling up at the Constitutional Court.

However, constitutional law expert Irman Putra Sidin disagrees.

Irman told The Jakarta Post over the weekend the authority to handle election disputes was mandated to the Constitutional Court by the Constitution, which stipulates the court’s authority to rule on general election disputes.

Disputes in regional mayoralty and regency elections were previously handled by high courts in the respective regions, while gubernatorial elections disputes were handled by the Supreme Court. But a 2004 Constitutional Court ruling included regional elections in the definition of general elections, thus granting the Constitutional Court the authority to adjudicate regional election disputes.

The court began handling election cases in 2009.

“If the regional leaders are elected directly by people in the area, the process is an election and disputes surrounding it must go to the Constitutional Court,” Irman said.

To move the authority to another court would require amending the Constitution, Irman said, calling the option “too much”.

“If we want courts other than the Constitutional Court to handle regional election disputes, we should change the way we appoint regional leaders. Don’t use elections, just let local representative councils select the leaders,” he told the Post.

Another option, he said, “is to figure out how to make regional elections free of disputes by preparing well the organizers and participants”.

Irman also criticized the option of returning the authority to adjudicate regional election disputes cases to local high courts.

“It was chaos back then when high courts handled regional election disputes with judges being kidnapped and so on. No one dare [intimidate] the Constitutional Court,” he added.

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