As the Constitutional Court’s ruling on the presidential election result looms, representatives from the rival camps are reportedly scrambling to strike a political deal.

Gerindra Party chairman and unsuccessful presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto, who submitted the legal challenge to the result, returned from a trip to Germany on Wednesday evening, hours before the court is scheduled to rule on the case on Thursday.

According to Gerindra executives, Prabowo went abroad for a medical checkup.

But sources from two political parties from the government coalition as well as one from the opposition camp said that Prabowo stopped off in Bangkok before returning to Indonesia.

The sources, who requested anonymity, said that in Bangkok Prabowo met a representative from President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s camp to talk about the possibility of Gerindra joining the government coalition.

The meeting also discussed the allocation of key Cabinet positions for the party. When asked who represented Jokowi in the meeting, the sources said it was either National Intelligence Agency (BIN) head Budi Gunawan or his aide. The spy chief is known as a close confidant of Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri. Tempo magazine reported on Monday that Prabowo had met with Budi to discuss the same topic in Bali last month.

No Gerindra officials have confirmed the meeting. Budi, meanwhile, was not available for comment on Wednesday.

Jokowi had previously suggested that he was amenable to the idea of Gerindra, the biggest opposition party, joining his coalition. “I am open to anyone who wants to join hands to develop and build the country together,” Jokowi said when asked about the matter in a recent interview with The Jakarta Post.

Several executives of political parties from the ruling camp have also said that they would prefer Gerindra joining over other opposition parties such as the National Mandate Party (PAN) and the Democratic Party.

Gerindra executive Andre Rosiade said that Prabowo would soon gather all political parties in his camp — the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), the Democrats and PAN — to talk about the fate of the coalition.

“[Prabowo and the parties in his camp] will discuss whether this coalition will continue or just go our separate ways. Prabowo and Sandiaga [Uno] should talk about it because it is they who were mandated by the four parties to run in the presidential race,” Andre said.

Even as the political elites contemplated political reconciliation, hundreds of Prabowo supporters gathered near the Constitutional Court building in Central Jakarta on Wednesday to demand that the justices deliver a “fair decision”.

Coordinated by former Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) adviser Abdullah Hehamahua, the rally included the National Movement to Safeguard Fatwas (GNPF) and the 212 Alumni Brotherhood (PA 212) that had previously demanded the prosecution of former Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama in 2016.

“If the court hands down an unjust ruling, we will report the government to the National Commission on Human Rights [Komnas HAM] for neglecting the deaths of hundreds of local poll administrators and the victims [of the May 22 riots] who have died or gone missing,” Abdullah said.

Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Wiranto said the police would not issue any permit for a rally in front of the court building on the day of the announcement and would arrest anyone organizing such a demonstration as stipulated in the 1998 law on freedom of expression in public places.

The Jakarta Police said they would close access to roads near the court building.

“However, road closures are situational. More roads may be closed if the number of people in tomorrow’s demonstration is large,” Jakarta Police traffic law enforcement unit head Comr. Muhammad Nasir told the Post.

Constitutional Court spokesperson Fajar Laksono said the court had completed its preparations for Thursday’s ruling and urged all parties to accept whatever the justices decided.

“The court’s ruling is binding. If the court accepts [the legal challenge], that means the arguments in the petition are valid, but if not, it means that the plaintiff could not prove the arguments,” he said.

The court hearings finished on Monday. The Prabowo-Sandiaga ticket had accused the General Elections Commission (KPU) of inflating Jokowi’s vote tally by about 22 million votes, allegedly from a problematic final voter list (DPT) that included 17.5 million voters with invalid ID cards and an additional 5.7 million voters in the special voters’ list (DPK).

However, Prabowo’s witnesses delivered somewhat underwhelming testimony with conflicting statements that were often criticized by the justices for their lack of consistency in the hearings.

The KPU’s final vote tally placed Jokowi-Ma’ruf Amin as the winner with 55.5 percent of the vote compared to Prabowo-Sandiaga’s 44.5 percent.

However, the plaintiffs claimed that based on the C1 vote tally forms the Prabowo camp had gathered, Jokowi and Ma’ruf should have only secured about 63 million votes.

Analysts have said that Jokowi’s victory margin of nearly 17 million votes meant the opposition did not appear to have a strong enough case to prove that “systematic, structured and massive” had affected the election results.

In a recent article, Simon Butt, the associate director for the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law at the University of Sydney in Australia, said the Prabowo camp needed a “legal and evidentiary miracle” to win the case. (das/kmt)

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