T

he General Elections Commission (KPU) rejected on Friday the lawsuit drawn up by losing presidential ticket Prabowo Subianto-Hatta Rajasa against the election results, calling it "vague and obscure".

In an ambitious petition filed with the Constitutional Court (MK), which bases its claims on allegations of massive and systematic fraud during the election, Prabowo and Hatta are seeking to annul the KPU results that declared victory for rival ticket Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo-Jusuf Kalla, based on a margin of more than 8 million votes.

Ali Nurdin, one of lawyers representing the KPU, told the court during Friday's hearing that Prabowo's team of lawyers had failed to provide strong arguments to back up their claims of '€œstructural, massive and systematic'€ electoral fraud.

"Structural, massive and systemic means it was by design, and conducted collectively and systematically by the election organizers. However, the petitioners do not elaborate who was involved in the allegations or what kind of violations were committed," Ali said. "These claims have no legal basis and are not based on facts."

The KPU's lawyers also questioned Prabowo's claim that he won the presidential election with 67,139,153 votes (50.25 percent) compared to 66,435,124 (49.74 percent) for Jokowi-Kalla.

"They [Prabowo and Hatta] did not pinpoint where the violations lie: whether at polling stations, the local level or the provincial level," Ali said.

Neither did the plaintiffs elaborate on their claims of a surplus 1.5 million votes for Jokowi as opposed to their own alleged loss of 1.2 million votes in 155,000 polling stations, he added.

"If the vote count for Prabowo was reduced by 1.2 million votes, they should have demanded a total of 63 million votes, instead," Ali said. "The petition does not meet legal requirements; therefore, the court should rule that it cannot be accepted."

Previously, KPU commissioner  Ida Budhiati said that the Prabowo camp'€™s claims had, in fact, been addressed throughout the multi-tier recapitulation process and that they had been resolved at the provincial level, resulting in all witnesses from both camps agreeing to the vote tallies and signing off on the results.

The bench, which is led by Constitutional Court Chief Justice Hamdan Zoelva - lambasted the petition prepared by Prabowo's legal team during the first hearing on Wednesday, saying it was full of errors and blaming the legal team for failing to corroborate their claims of '€œstructural, massive and systematic'€ fraud.