T

he Regional Elections Law faces another review at the Constitutional Court (MK), in which a petitioner is demanding that more time be allowed for challenging voting results and for settling disputes.

Doni Istyanto, a citizen, as well as a consultant for regional election candidates, demanded on Thursday that the MK extend the time limit for regional head candidates to file appeals on final vote counts, especially in eastern Indonesia, where communications and transportation often cause problems.

Article 157 point 5 of the 2015 Regional Elections Law stipulates that the time limit to register an appeal with the MK is three days. Doni proposes to extend it to six days.

He also asked the court to extend the dispute settlement period from 45 days to 90 days as the simultaneous elections on Dec. 9 will be held in at least 262 regions, so it is expected the MK will face many cases.

'€œThe judicial review was filed to protect the rights of everyone to be able to file their cases and have their disputes settled objectively,'€ said Doni, adding that in this case, he does not represent his current client, but acts for the greater good of all the candidates.

'€œThe unstable electricity and challenging geographic situations in the regions slow down the data collection needed for case reviews. The tricky Internet connections hinder online filing of cases to the court. Even if we have to go to a bigger city where the Internet is better, transportation is scarce. There are not many flights or ship schedules for people on islands,'€ Doni explained after a session with the court on Thursday.

He based his case on difficulties that he and fellow consultants dealt with when collecting pre-election survey data in Maluku, North Maluku, Papua and West Papua, given the geographic conditions.

Presiding judge Patrialis Akbar suggested he present cases as evidence in the next session on Sept. 23.

Separately, Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) Commissioner Nasrullah acknowledges the difficulty in collecting voting data.

'€œCounting poll results in Yogyakarta, which is still a western part of Indonesia, is already hard '€” let alone the eastern part. I was a member of the regional election committee [KPUD] in Yogyakarta back in 2003 and 2008,'€ he told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

However, he said that he did not know whether there are candidates that have failed to report voting data or dispute cases under the existing time frame.

'€œBut I think the court and the KPU could still give leeway for the time limit, given the geographic conditions. If not, the candidates could do more preparation to ease data collection, such as by putting representatives in each polling station, but that will be expensive for them because one region could have dozens, if not hundreds, of posts,'€ Nasrullah added.

Alternatively, the KPU could loosen up providing copy of poll summaries (C1 forms) of each post to candidates even if they do not have representative there, Nasrullah said.

KPU Regulation No. 10/2015 on vote counting and collection of regional elections implies that the KPU will give copies of voting results to candidate representatives in each polling station.

Nasrullah suggests the KPU be more flexible and give the copies to candidates even if they do not have representative in the stations. Thus candidates could recount poll results from all posts easier and detect any cheating done by their rivals.

Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) executive director Titi Anggraeni is of the same opinion as Nasrullah on giving copies to candidates even when they do not put any of their people in the posts.

However, she does not agree with Doni'€™s proposal to extend the time limit to six days from the close of polls.

'€œThe time limit of three times 24 hours is for candidates to register case reviews, not to give all the complete data. The settlement of disputes is divided into several sessions, through which candidates could take the time to complete the data,'€ Titi said.

About the demand for a longer dispute settlement duration, Titi said that such a proposal had been turned down as it would delay inauguration and give more time to challenge election results.

'€œWe can learn from the 2014 legislative elections from which the court received 901 appeals, but still managed to settle them in less than 30 days,'€ Titi concluded. (rbk)
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