All branches of government agreed on Friday to help safeguard the independence of the Constitutional Court by not interfering should it hear dispute cases connected to the presidential election
ll branches of government agreed on Friday to help safeguard the independence of the Constitutional Court by not interfering should it hear dispute cases connected to the presidential election.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, along with General Elections Commission (KPU) head Husni Kamil Manik, Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) head Muhammad, as well as House of Representatives speaker Marzuki Ali and National Police chief Gen. Sutarman, came to the court on Friday and held a meeting to discuss possible measures to deal with an election dispute.
Currently, some Constitutional Court justices, including Chief Justice Hamdan Zoelva, have past political ties. The court has been struggling to rebuild its reputation after the arrest of disgraced ex-chief justice Akil Mochtar, who sold rigged local election dispute rulings to the highest bidder.
'I assure you all justices are credible and independent regardless of their background,' Hamdan said on Friday after the meeting.
Hamdan is a former lawmaker from the Muslim-based Crescent Star Party (PBB) and fellow justice Patrialis Akbar is a former lawmaker from the National Mandate Party (PAN). The two parties declared support for the Prabowo Subianto-Hatta Rajasa ticket in the presidential race.
Patrialis was inaugurated in late 2013 despite criticism that his appointment by Yudhoyono was made without a transparent and accountable selection process. Patrialis' performance as law and human rights minister earlier was considered lackluster by many.
Hamdan also gave assurances that Yudhoyono's visit was not a form of intervention.
'No, there is no [intervention]. Instead, [the meeting] agreed to give a commitment to not intervene [with the court],' he said.
Hamdan added that Yudhoyono and leaders of other institutions were there to support the court.
During the meeting, Hamdan also expressed the court's appreciation to all other government bodies, particularly Yudhoyono's administration, for maintaining the independence of the court and abiding by all of its rulings.
Friday's meeting came only two days after a similar coordination meeting held between the court, the KPU, Bawaslu and representatives from both presidential tickets.
After that meeting, Prabowo campaign lawyer Habiburokhman told reporters that his side was ready to file an election dispute case focused on vote-buying, theft of recapitulation documents (C1 forms) in some regions and indications of public officials being partial, should the KPU declare that Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo-Jusuf Kalla had won the election.
Jokowi's camp has said it would file a challenge only if there was a huge discrepancy between the official vote result and the credible quick count results that projected a solid Jokowi victory.
The court has given three days after the July 22 KPU announcement for either campaign to file a dispute. Once all necessary documents have been submitted, the court would hold its first hearing on Aug. 3 and then issue a verdict by Aug. 21.
Following a closely fought election, pollsters have estimated the vote gap between the two tickets to be at most 6 percent.
Justice Arief Hidayat said he believed his fellow justices with political backgrounds would remain impartial in hearing election cases.
'I know exactly they are now non-partisan. You can see how objective we all were when we heard the recent legislative election dispute cases,' Arief said.
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