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ivil society groups are looking to challenge Article 158 of Law No. 8/2015 on regional elections, which they believe sets a limit on candidates who want to lodge complaints about vote rigging in the Dec. 9 balloting.

The article stipulates that the Constitutional Court may register complaints regarding possible vote rigging only from political parties or pairs of candidates who competed in the Dec. 9 regional elections and who only saw between a 0.5 percent and 2 percent difference in the votes garnered.

'€œThe regulation is seriously ridiculous as it has failed to uphold electoral justice. It seemed like the lawmakers really thought that no candidate or election committee would cheat,'€ Setara Institute researcher Ismail Hasani said at a public discussion in Jakarta on Sunday.

The Constitutional Court has received 145 reports of disputes over the regional elections and is expected to announce its decision on which cases it will handle starting on Jan. 7 to 12, 2016.

Ismail cited data from his research showing that the Constitutional Court would only follow up on about 21 reports and throw out the rest of the cases because they failed to meet the administrative requirements stipulated in the article.

'€œIt means that corrupt candidates will end up becoming leaders in a number of regions across the country,'€ Ismail said.

He said that the problematic article had in fact been a proposal from the Constitutional Court to the House of Representatives when the two institutions were involved in deliberating the law.

The court argued it could deal with a smaller number of cases by implementing such a stipulation.

Ismail proposed that only best solution to the problem is for President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo to pass a regulation in lieu of law (Perppu) stipulating that the court has to process all complaints, or at least set a new limit on which candidates could file complaints to the court.

Adhie Massardi from the Clean Indonesia Movement (GBI) warned that it would be dangerous if the President kept on issuing Perppu for all political problems in the country.

'€œIt'€™s not about the law, but about our interpretation of the law,'€ Adhie said.

He then suggested that the President give the General Elections Commission (KPU), the Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) and the Constitutional Court the authority to come up with a joint interpretation of the law.

'€œThe Constitutional Court and other relevant parties should have known that they can'€™t implement any law without a clear guideline on its interpretation,'€ Adhie said.

Indonesian Voters Committee (TEPI) coordinator Jerry Sumampouw said the public could now do nothing but wait and watch the process at the court.

'€œIt has already happened. Even if the House decided to revise the law, it will take effect in the next season of regional elections,'€ Jerry said.

Salamuddin Daeng of the Institute for Global Justice (IGJ) said the unresolved problems from the current regional elections could spell a disaster in the future.

'€œIn the short run, the government would not be able to solve this political instability. Just let the Constitutional Court ignore the reports and see that it could turn into a serious act of rebellion from the public in the future,'€ Daeng warned. (foy)