The latest presidential election dispute hearing saw witnesses and experts from Jokowi’s camp trade barbs with challenger Prabowo Subianto’s legal team over various issues, including a newly surfaced allegation that Jokowi’s aide had insinuated that “fraud was a part of democracy”.

The allegation emerged during a hearing in the early hours of Thursday, when Hairul Anas, one of Prabowo’s witnesses, claimed that he had seen the controversial words in a presentation slide during a training session for election witnesses led by Presidential Chief of Staff Moeldoko in Jakarta from Feb. 20 to 21.

Hairul said he had attended the training session, since he was a legislative candidate from the Crescent Star Party (PBB), whose chairman Yusril Ihza Mahendra is the chief of Jokowi’s legal team handling the lawsuit.

Jokowi’s legal team presented Anas Nashikin, a training coordinator of Jokowi’s campaign team, who had been involved in the training event, to clarify the issue before the court, but the hours of hearing soon turned into debates among the conflicting parties.

Anas admitted there was one slide in the presentation showing the words “fraud is a part of democracy”. However, it was only a gimmick to attract participants to the training, which took place before the April election.

“We only wanted to remind people that fraud can happen […]. That’s why we had to anticipate it in the [2019] election,” he said.

Anas said Moeldoko, who joined the event alongside some political bigwigs supporting Jokowi, did not use any presentation slide when he led a training session and only gave a speech.

However, when Jokowi’s lawyer Christina Aryani asked Anas about who had led another session, “Guard 01 Victory”, referring to Jokowi’s candidacy number, Anas said it had been led by Moeldoko, and the session had presentation slides. Moeldoko clarified that he only reminded the witnesses to stay alert, as there was a risk of electoral fraud during the election.

Justice Saldi Isra subsequently interrupted and grew angry at Anas, pointing out that his testimony was too inconsistent. “I remind you that you have sworn an oath, so if you give an incorrect statement, it can be categorized as providing a false statement.”

Anas then apologized and changed his testimony, saying he was wrong because it was Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) secretary-general Hasto Kristiyanto who had led that session.

During Friday’s session, Anas was often seen hesitating or giving unfirm answers when lawyers of Prabowo’s legal team grilled him with questions, ranging from whether or not Jokowi had attended the event to the content of Hasto’s presentation.

At one point, Anas said no state representatives had gone to the February training session, because it had been a limited event by Jokowi’s campaign team. However, he later said officials from the General Elections Commission (KPU) and the Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) had been invited to get involved in training sessions.

Prabowo’s lawyer Teuku Nasrullah grew angry and claimed the organizers had invited the KPU because the latter was an inseparable part of Jokowi’s camp, leading KPU commissioner Wahyu Setiawan to protest and request that Nasrullah retract the statement.

The Constitutional Court is set to deliver its ruling on Friday.

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