The Prabowo campaign team said all of the witnesses would be “unexpected” and could strengthen its argument that incumbent Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Ma’ruf Amin committed structured, systematic and massive fraud.

“We have prepared them […] There will be witnesses who will give surprising testimonies,” said campaign team member Priyo Budi Santoso on Saturday.

Priyo said one of the possible witnesses would be Adj. Comr. Sulman Aziz, a former Pasirwangi Police chief in Garut, West Java, who said in March that the top brass of the local police had ordered him and fellow district police chiefs in Garut to direct people in the regency to vote for Jokowi.

The team also asserted that Prabowo’s witnesses must first get a safety guarantee from the Witness and Victim Protection Agency (LPSK) and on Saturday had asked for the agency’s advice in protecting its witnesses who would deliver their testimony at the hearing.

After having a discussion with the agency, Bambang Widjojanto, the chief lawyer of the Prabowo legal team, said the team would submit a letter to the court asking the justices to request the agency to protect the witnesses despite the law only allowing the agency to provide protection for witnesses and victims related to criminal cases.

“The agency has a limit in protecting witnesses and victims as stipulated in the law. Therefore, we decided to submit a letter. Hopefully, this will secure the [witnesses hearing] process at the court,” Bambang said.

The agency, however, said it could not fulfill the Prabowo team’s request to provide protection for its witnesses.

“In our discussion, the legal team was well aware of our limits according to the law,” LPSK spokesperson Rully Novian said.

“It is up to the court to provide us a far greater role […] and ask the LPSK to protect the witnesses despite the criminal matters limit,” he added.

Bambang said the team had demanded the witnesses be protected in at least two ways, namely by delivering testimonies through teleconferences and be presented behind a screen.

The court on Friday began to hear the lawsuit challenging the General Elections Commission’s (KPU) presidential election result, which declared Jokowi and Ma’ruf the winners.

In the hearing, the justices allowed Prabowo’s lawyers to deliver the amended lawsuit instead of the initial document that was submitted on May 24, despite no legal basis that justified adding a new petition to the existing one.

The legal team argued there was electoral fraud that resulted in vote inflation amounting to between 16 million and 30 million fraudulent votes for the incumbent ticket.

Based on the C1 vote tally forms the Prabowo camp gathered, Prabowo secured 52 percent of the vote. The official election result shows that the Jokowi-Ma’ruf pair secured 85 million votes (55.5 percent), while Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno garnered 68 million votes (44.5 percent).

In the petition, the plaintiffs claimed Jokowi-Ma’ruf should have only got around 63 million votes and accused the KPU of inflating the Jokowi-Ma’ruff tally by around 22 million votes.

Therefore, the justices decided to delay the evidentiary hearing to June 18 to give the KPU, as a defendant, the Jokowi legal team and the Elections Supervisory Agency some time to adjust their answers to Prabowo’s amended lawsuit.

KPU commissioner Viryan Azis said the KPU had documented the vote count process at each level. However, no witnesses from the two candidate pairs had raised concerns regarding the results, but rather only related to technical matters.

“For example, they raised concerns about the voter list at polling stations or something like that. There has never been a claim that there were ’stolen votes’,” he said.

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