T

he battle for the Bali governor's seat entered a new phase on Monday when the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) declared that it would contest the election result at the Constitutional Court (MK) in Jakarta.

'We are ready to officially file the lawsuit with the Constitutional Court on Wednesday. We are eager to safeguard the democratic process and the people of Bali's votes,' Arteria Dahlan, advocacy team representative of PDI-P, told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

The decision was made following the narrow defeat suffered by PDI-P-endorsed candidates AAN Puspayoga and Dewa Sukrawan. In its plenary meeting on Sunday, the Bali General Elections Commission (KPUD) announced incumbent governor Made Mangku Pastika and Ketut Sudikerta, who are endorsed by a coalition of nine political parties, including the Golkar and Democratic parties, as the winner following the recapitulation of voting results presented by KPUD from the island's eight regencies and one city.

The defeat shocked PDI-P to its core. The party has been a dominant political force on the island since 1999 and has never suffered a political loss of this scale since. The party entered the gubernatorial election with strong confidence, fully aware that it could count on the support of six regents and one mayor, as well as the psychological connection between the Balinese people and the party's chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri, whose grandmother was Balinese from Buleleng.

The confidence started to fail when the ballot recapitulation at district level showed that Pastika led the race. Puspayoga's camp responded by sending contradictory messages to the public: openly claiming a huge victory and at the same time ordering their election teams not to sign the regency-level documents for the ballot recapitulation.

It then upped the pressure by claiming that Pastika's election team had committed massive frauds, that the security forces had implemented excessive security arrangements, and finally demanded KPUD hold a recount.

The embarrassment reached its climax on Sunday when the KPUD declared Pastika and Sudikerta as the pair that had officially won the election. The commission's final count revealed that the pair had garnered 1,063,734 votes (50.02 percent), or only 996 votes more than the total votes received by Puspayoga and Sukrawan.