T

he Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) is reportedly set to file a suit with the Constitutional Court (MK) to challenge the North Sumatra Regional Elections Committee’s (KPUD) declaration of incumbent Gatot Pujo Nugroho-Tengku Erry as governor- and deputy governor-elect.

PDI-P, alongside the National Care for People Party (PPRN) and the Prosperous Peace Party (PDS), nominated defeated candidate pair Effendi Simbolon-Jumiran Abdi in the recent North Sumatra gubernatorial election and claimed that the winning candidate pair had committed violations during the election process.

North Sumatra PDI-P chairman Panda Nababan said his party would file the suit on Monday.

“We have evidence of the violations [committed by the winning pair’s team]. We have the video, shot in Nias Island, showing that many ballot papers of the candidate number 5 [Gatot Pujo Nugroho-Tengku Erry Nuradi] had been marked before the voting began,” said Panda Nababan to The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

Panda said that some governmental apparatus, including district and subdistrict heads across the province, had been mobilized to enable Gatot-Erry to win.

“We will disclose everything at the court. We will prove that the victory of Gatot-Erry is part of a high-level conspiracy. There have been so many voting irregularities and frauds,” he continued.

The KPUD announced on Friday that Gatot-Erry, supported by the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura), had won the gubernatorial election after obtaining 1,604,377 of a total of 4,861,467 valid votes, or 33 percent of the vote.

Effendi-Jumiran came second and garnered 1,183,187 votes (24.34 percent), followed by Gus Irawan Pasaribu-Soekirman, nominated by the Gerindra Party, National Mandate Party (PAN) and a number of smaller political parties, with 1,027,433 votes (21.13 percent).

Fourth place went to Amri Tambunan and RE Nainggolan, backed up by the Democratic Party, with 594,414 votes (12.23 percent) and the last pair was Chairuman Harahap-Fadly Nurzal, nominated by the Golkar Party, United Development Party (PPP) and Labor Party with 452,096 votes (9.3 percent).

The campaign teams of candidate pairs Effendi-Jumiran and Gus Irawan-Soekirman refused to sign the official report of the vote recap on Friday, while the three other candidate pairs accepted the result.

Gus Irawan Pasaribu said that his campaign team would file a lawsuit against the election result.

“Let the team and the coalition of parties take the necessary measures to handle the voting irregularities during the election,” Gus Irawan said.

Responding to the lawsuit, KPUD member Sumut Turunan Gulo said that all parties had the right to do so.

“The KPUD has set the swearing-in ceremony for the newly elected governor and deputy governor for June 16. However, if MK discovers that there are some voting irregularities in a number of regions and rules for revoting, the ceremony can be postponed,” said Turunan Gulo, adding that the legal process of the vote recap might take around 21 days after a party filed the suit with the MK.

Earlier, the North Sumatra Elections Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu) reported that it had found at least 368 possible violations committed by all the camps contending the recent gubernatorial election.