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s the registration period for filing election disputes closes, many losing regional head candidates have registered petitions despite being far behind the winning tickets.

As of Wednesday evening, there were 56 regional election disputes filed with the Constitutional Court (MK), including six relating to gubernatorial elections in five regions. Registration closed at midnight on Wednesday.

The six consist of petitions from losing candidates in Maluku, North Maluku, South Sumatra, Lampung and Southeast Sulawesi.

In North Maluku, candidate pair Abdul Gani Kasuba and M. Al Yasin Ali contested the victory of Ahmad Hidayat Mus and Rivai Umar. Abdul and Al Yasin’s petition chiefly points to Ahmad’s arrest and detainment by the Corruption Eradication Commission as a disqualifying factor, despite the 2016 Region Elections Law saying corruption suspects lose their right to candidacy only if they are convicted.

Ahmad, a former regent of the Sula Islands, was named a suspect in March in relation to a reportedly botched procurement project for an airport that was estimated to have caused Rp 3.4 billion (US$236,480) in state losses.

In the Lampung race, two out of three losing candidate pairs filed separate petitions against the victory of the Arinal Djunaidi-Chusnunia pair.

Both the Herman Hasanusi-Sutono and Muhammad Ridho Ficardo-Bachtiar Basri pairs alleged that Arinal and Chusnunia engaged in “structured, systematic and massive” cheating, pointing to vote-buying.

The South Sumatra and Southeast Sulawesi petitions focus more on administrative violations committed by the local General Elections Commission (KPU) and bias on the part of polling station officials.

The arguments and cases built by the losing candidates are varied, but mostly their petitions are not based on razor-thin defeats.

According to Article 158 of the 2016 law, candidates can only file a dispute if the margin is between 0.5 and 2 percent of the votes cast, depending on the population of the region.

Of the six gubernatorial election dispute petitions, only North Maluku’s meets the requirement, with 7,870 votes or 1.42 percentage points between Abdul-Al Yasin and Ahmad-Rivai.

The losing South Sumatra candidate pair were 5 points behind winners Herman Deru and Mawardi Yahya, while petitioners from Lampung, Maluku and South Sulawesi were all over 12 points behind the winning tickets.

Very few of the 50 mayoral and regency election disputes meet the requirement either.

The petitioners argued, however, that the violations that occurred during the elections artificially inflated the winners’ vote tallies and that the court should consider the disputes despite failing to meet the requirement.

“A democratic election cannot happen if the means to achieve it are limited and parties cannot use the judicial process to settle regional election disputes,” Herman-Sutono’s petition said.

Constitutional scholar Feri Amsari said strictly observing the required margin would encourage more election violations.

Regional elections set no margin of victory and candidates with the most votes win the election.

“Candidates will try to cheat as much as possible to gain more votes and exceed the 0.5 to 2 percent threshold, thus avoiding electoral disputes,” Feri said. “I find this very problematic.”

He expressed the hope that the court would take a more considered stance and determine whether widespread cheating had indeed occurred before applying the vote-margin requirement.

Constitutional Court spokesperson Fajar Laksono said earlier that the court would consider disputes that did not meet Article 158’s requirements, saying that the court wanted to avoid the criticism of merely putting simple mathematical considerations ahead of constitutional rights.

The court has had to deal with a deluge of election disputes since the first direct regional elections were held in 2005, with the court ruling on 910 petitions between 2008 and 2010.

Fadli Ramadhanil of the Association for Elections and Democracy said the KPU could improve the verification of voter lists and detection of vote-buying.

“If the organizers can ensure the elections are conducted fairly, then there will be no need for election disputes,” he said.