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Court braces for disputes
Acquiescent: Witnesses for the four West Java gubernatorial candidate pairs and members of the West Java Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu West Java) attend a West Java General Elections Commission (KPU West Java) meeting on provincial vote recapitulation on Sunday
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cquiescent: Witnesses for the four West Java gubernatorial candidate pairs and members of the West Java Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu West Java) attend a West Java General Elections Commission (KPU West Java) meeting on provincial vote recapitulation on Sunday. No objection was raised against the recapitulation that puts Bandung Mayor Ridwan Kamil narrowly in the lead in the gubernatorial race although a candidate is set to dispute the result. (JP/Arya Dipa)
As the General Elections Commission (KPU) gears up for its announcement of the official vote tallies for the 2018 regional elections on Monday, the Constitutional Court is preparing to hear election disputes from dissatisfied candidates.
Regency and mayoral election disputes were filed from July 4 to 10 while gubernatorial election disputes were filed from July 7 to 11.
Around 62 election disputes were filed from the 101 regions that held regional elections last year. Based on that, the court estimates that around 96 to 112 cases will be filed from the 171 regions holding elections this time around, which could be a challenging task for the nine-justice bench.
But Chief Justice Anwar Usman was optimistic, saying: “All Constitutional Court personnel including the justices are ready for their assignments in relation to election disputes.”
“We have also prepared more advanced and sophisticated IT equipment and systems,” he said in a press conference on Thursday.
Court secretary general M. Guntur Hamzah said the online system would help with time efficiency, as petitioners would not have to hurry from their various regions to file their disputes in Jakarta and meet the deadline.
“After registering their dispute online, petitioners can come to the court with four copies of their petition,” Guntur said.
According to the court website, nine election disputes had been filed as of Sunday, consisting of five mayoral races and four regency races.
Tegal mayoral candidate pair Habib Ali Zaenal Abidin and Tanty Prasetyaningrum were the first to formally file a dispute on Thursday.
The pair lost by only 316 votes to winning ticket Dedy Yon and Jumadi.
Habib’s lawyer, Budi Yuwono Alatas said the election was marred by “structured and massive violations”, including vote-buying and documentation inconsistencies.
Out of the 62 election disputes filed with the court last year, only eight were accepted, with the court ordering repeat elections in seven cases and a vote recount in one case.
Th court dismissed four of the disputes, while the remaining 50 were not considered because they failed to meet the requirements, mostly with regard to the vote margin.
Candidates can only file a dispute if the vote margin is at least 0.5 to 2 percent of all valid votes cast, depending on the population of the region, as stipulated in the 2016 Regional Elections Law.
The Constitutional Court has 45 working days to settle the complaints and has scheduled the first election dispute hearing for July 26.
Other candidates have also stated their intention to file disputes should the KPU’s official announcement fail to meet their expectations.
Gerindra chairman Prabowo Subianto, for example, has said his party was ready to file a dispute if the KPU’s final result on Monday did not show that Gerindra candidate Sudrajat won the West Java gubernatorial race.
KPU West Java’s vote recapitulation on Sunday has put Bandung Mayor Ridwan Kamil narrowly in the lead with about 32 percent of the vote, while Sudrajat trails with about 28 percent.
Prabowo said he had received several reports of irregularities in the West Java election, including questionable voter lists and “undemocratic interventions” from certain groups.
“We regret those interventions and will consider our next steps,” Prabowo said on Saturday after a meeting with Sudrajat, as quoted by kompas.com. “According to our real count, we are the ones who won in West Java.”
“We will not be continually trifled with because we represent the people, we have many supporters, and we understand the people’s desire for change,” he added.
But on Sunday, Otang Sukarian, the witness for the Sudrajat-Ahmad Syaikhu pair, told the KPU that he did not object to the recapitulation result, but raised concerns about the accuracy of the voter lists.
Gubernatorial election vote recapitulations by regional KPUs in other major provinces have so far remained similar to quick count estimates, with Ganjar Pranowo winning in Central Java, I Wayan Koster in Bali, Syamsuar in Riau and Isran Noor in East Kalimantan.
In South Sulawesi, KPU Makassar decided to hold another election, not a revote, in 2020 after its vote recapitulation showed that the Makassar mayoral election’s sole candidate pair Munafri Arifuddin and Andi Rachmatika Dewi garnered 47 percent of the vote, which is insufficient to win the race.
— Arya Dipa in Bandung, Suherdjoko in Semarang, Ni Komang Erviani in Denpasar, N. Adri in Balikpapan, Rizal Harahap in Pekanbaru and Andi Hajramurni in Makassar contributed to this story.
