The Constitutional Court has opened the trial on the presidential election dispute with a first hearing in which the Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno legal team presented its objections to the election results.
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·3 minutes read
The Constitutional Court has opened the trial on the presidential election dispute with a first hearing in which the Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno legal team presented its objections to the election results.
The trial has turned the Constitutional Court into a political stage. That is fine. Allegations of election fraud that have been voiced at press conferences or in social media are now conveyed on that stage.
The Constitutional Court is a respectable stage for resolving election disputes. Street action will not change the results of the election and entails the risk of sparking riots. In the trial, all the arguments, opinions, evidence and witnesses will be assessed by the panel of judges. The proposals, opinions or witnesses that have been put forward by the Prabowo-Sandi camp will certainly elicit a response from the lawyers of the General Elections Commission (KPU) and from the Joko “Jokowi” Widodo-Ma\'ruf Amin team.
The revised lawsuit claims that Jokowi, as the incumbent in the presidential race, committed numerous fraudulent legal violations. Overseas experts were quoted to support that argument. The Prabowo-Sandi legal team asked the Constitutional Court to annul the KPU\'s vote count of the presidential election – according to which the Jokowi-Amin pair won the election with 55.5 percent of the vote – and to declare Prabowo-Sandi the winner with 52 percent of the vote. According to the KPU\'s count, Jokowi-Amin won by a clear margin of 16.9 million votes.
The Prabowo-Sandi legal team asked the Constitutional Court to declare that the Jokowi-Amin pair had committed structured, systematic and massive fraud and asked the court to disqualify the Jokowi-Amin ticket and declare Prabowo-Sandi as president and vice president for the 2019-2024 period. Another demand submitted by the Prabowo-Sandi legal team was that the Constitutional Court order a repeat vote in an honest manner or repeat voting in a number of provinces. Prabowo-Sandi\'s team asked state institutions that have the authority to dissolve the KPU and recruit new commissioners.
Any argument can be created. However, what is more important is how the Prabowo-Sandi team seeks to prove the alleged lack of neutrality of the state apparatus, the alleged misuse of state funds and SOEs for the benefit of the Jokowi-Amin pair. Backing up such allegations is not easy. The evidence presented by the Prabowo-Sandi legal team was in the form of news clipping by 12 regional heads in West Sumatra and similar records in a number of other regions that supported Jokowi. In fact, Jokowi-Amin lost in a number of provinces and lost heavily in West Sumatra.
Let the nine Constitutional Court judges decide. However, the Constitutional Court will, of course, consider whether the arguments of the Prabowo-Sandi team significantly influence the vote with a difference of around 16.9 million. Also to be considered: According to the constitutional calendar, the inauguration of the president for the 2019-2424 period must take place on Oct. 20, 2019. The demand to dissolve the KPU could disrupt the state administration. However, we believe the Constitutional Court judges, who guard the Constitution, are true statesmen and not politicians.