Initially drawing little attention from observers and the media, the election in Sabu Raijua became a nationwide sensation in February after the local Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) revealed to the public that Orient had in fact both an Indonesian and a United States passport.

NTT-born Orient and his running mate Thobias Uly won 48 percent of the vote in a three-horse race in December 2020 -- beating the 30 and 21 percent the two other pairs netted. But Orient had failed to declare his possession of a US passport, which should have made him ineligible to run in the election. This has also put the General Elections Commission (KPU), particularly its Sabu Raijua office, under scrutiny for its inability to prevent Orient from competing in the race.

On Thursday, the Constitutional Court concluded that Orient had held a US passport since 2007, which he renewed in 2017.

Indonesia does not recognize dual citizenship. Its strict single-citizenship law stipulates that any Indonesian found to hold a foreign passport will automatically lose their Indonesian citizenship.

Thursday's ruling annulled the candidacy and victory of the Orient-Thobias pair in favor of petitioners Takem Irianto Radja Pono and Herman Hegi Radja Haba, a candidate pair who came last in the election. The pair turned to the court on March 9, two months after the election, as authorities had been unable to solve the unprecedented problem.

Read also: Dual citizenship spells trouble for regent-elect in East Nusa Tenggara

The court was aware that the petition was filed after the deadline for case filing on Dec. 18 -- or three days after the final vote count -- was passed. But this did not stop the court from hearing the case, with justice Suhartoyo saying that it was an unprecedented case with no prevailing regulations in place to solve it and that Orient's possession of a foreign passport became clear only after the KPU confirmed his victory on Jan. 23.

Bawaslu's Sabu Raijua office had suspected that Orient held a foreign passport prior to the race but was unable to find evidence to confirm its suspicions. It was only in early February that it received confirmation about Orient’s US passport from the US Embassy in Jakarta.

This, coupled with the fact that Orient had yet to be inaugurated in the final part of the election process, gave the court "a strong reason" to proceed with the hearing before eventually ruling to annul Orient's victory on Thursday.

The court ordered a revote in all districts in Sabu Raijua no longer than two months after Thursday's ruling, but limited it to the two remaining candidate pairs Takem-Herman and Nikodemus N. Rihi Heke-Yohanis Uly Kale to compete in the revote.

The KPU national office would now coordinate with local authorities to execute the ruling and discuss how to allocate the budget for hosting the revote, acting KPU commissioner Ilham Saputra said.

"We are determined to hold the revote in line with the ruling. An [update] to the voters’ roll is also needed, particularly after a recent disaster [tropical cyclone Seroja] hit the region and displaced voters from their homes," Ilham told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

Read also: More than 90 dead in Flores, Timor Leste floods, dozens missing

Election watchdogs were quick to welcome the ruling, with Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) executive director Khoirunnisa Nur Agustyati saying it protected the rights of the voters and upheld a fair election.

Hadar Nafis Gumay of the Network for Democracy and Electoral Integrity (Netgrit) said that while the ruling set a positive precedent, the case itself served as a strong note of caution for election organizers to scrutinize carefully the eligibility of those seeking to run for elected office.

"Election organizers should be really mindful of citizenship issues [during the candidate registration process]," said Hadar, who is a former KPU commissioner. "An amendment to KPU regulations should be made so that the candidates explicitly declare that they are Indonesian citizens in the registration documents."

Under the prevailing regulation, the KPU requires candidates to provide a copy of their ID as proof of citizenship without actually checking whether candidates also hold foreign citizenship.

In Orient's case, KPU Sabu Raijua declared him eligible to run for regent in late September 2020, after having only verified the documents Orient had submitted as a requirement, which did not mention his foreign passport.