T

he General Elections Commission (KPU) and the Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) say they are fully prepared to face any legal action taken by the losing presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto and his running mate Hatta Rajasa, including the lawsuit filed at the Constitutional Court on Friday evening.

Prabowo has refused to accept the result of the transparent, democratic and fair presidential election which was won by Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo and his running mate Jusuf Kalla. The KPU officially declared the latter to be the victors of the race on Tuesday.

KPU commissioner Sigit Pamungkas pointed out that the commission would be able to prove that there was no '€œstructured, systematic and massive fraud'€ as alleged by Prabowo and his coalition members.

'€œSo far there has been no report of vote shifting in our data,'€ he said, adding that even when there were cases of minor fraud, they had occurred in only a few regions scattered across some provinces.

Prabowo'€™s camp, Sigit added, had to prove to the court that the alleged fraud was carefully planned and there were masterminds behind the vote-rigging.

'€œIf there was a coordinator, then there are two possibilities, either it was the election organizer itself or the government. The fact is the current government is comprised mostly of his coalition,'€ he said.

Bawaslu commissioner Nelson Simanjuntak said that his office was fully prepared to face the court by instructing all regional election supervisors to provide notes on the presidential election, especially in regions rife with problems, such as Nias in North Sumatra and Sampang in East Java.

Besides filing a lawsuit with the Constitutional Court, Prabowo'€™s camp has been firing on all cylinders in its attempts to undermine the KPU'€™s official results. On Thursday, Prabowo'€™s advocate team reported the KPU and Bawaslu to the Election Organizers Ethics Council (DKPP) as well as the police.

Meanwhile, less than two hours before the Constitutional Court closed its registration desk for presidential election dispute cases on Friday night, the Prabowo-Hatta camp filed its petition, demanding ballot recounts, and even reruns of elections, due to vote-rigging in more than 52,000 polling stations.

Prabowo, who has been trying to grab the top position in the country for the past decade, demanded the court annul the KPU'€™s final national recapitulation and its announcement that the Jokowi-Kalla ticket was the winner of the July 9 presidential election.

'€œWe will build arguments to prove the structured, systematic and massive fraud in almost all of the 33 provinces in Indonesia and demand re-elections in 52,000 polling stations,'€ one of the Prabowo-Hatta coalition lawyers, Maqdir Ismail, said after registering the case, claiming that they had found a total of 21 million rigged ballots.

Earlier that day, Constitutional Court Chief Justice Hamdan Zoelva said the usual procedure was for the bench to first examine the hard evidence such as the recapitulation forms, known as C1s, before weighing the witnesses'€™ testimony as supporting evidence.

'€œHow many witnesses [we will permit] will depend on the development of the hearing. But, we will provide equal treatment to the plaintiffs, the respondents [the KPU], and the related parties [including Jokowi'€™s camp and Bawaslu],'€ he said.

Hundreds of supporters staged a rally in front of the court on Jl. Merdeka Barat, Central Jakarta as Prabowo and Hatta arrived on Friday evening.

'€œWe'€™re still continuing our struggle to save the Republic of Indonesia. We want real democracy,'€ Prabowo told the supporters, while Hatta said '€œInsya Allah [God willing] the court will uphold justice. Let'€™s leave it to the legal team while praying for a peaceful nation.'€