West Sumatra regional election voters file petition on Act 8/2015 of Regional Elections. However, the Applicants Guntur Abdurrahman, Adam Malik, Jefrinaldi, and Farizi Fadillah were absent in preliminary session on Tuesday (23/2), in Plenary Room, the Constitutional Court Building. They also didn’t deliver notification of their absent.  

“Since the Applicant absent, today’s session is closed and later will decided whether the session postponed or decided. The lack of information from the Applicant indicates Applicant’s seriousness,” said Chief Justice Arief Hidayat.

In the petition, the Applicant argued their constitutional rights were violated by Article 74 (3) Act 8/2015 which stated, “Political party or political party coalition who proposes candidate pair shall have particular campaign fund account on behalf of the candidate pair; the account shall later registered to provincial election commission or regency/city election commission.” (“Partai Politik atau gabungan Partai Politik yang mengusulkan pasangan calon wajib memiliki rekening khusus dana Kampanye atas nama pasangan calon dan didaftarkan kepada KPU Provinsi atau KPU Kabupaten/Kota”).

The Applicant claimed candidate pair number 1 Muslim Kasim-Fauzi Bahar and candidate pair number 2 Irwan Prayitno-Nasrul Abit had no particular campaign fund account. They argued they had reported it to West Sumatera election monitoring body as a violation at candidacy stage.

The Applicant assessed the Act a quo had weakness because it didn’t explicitly regulate legal consequences for violation against Article 7 (3). According to the Applicant, the lack of legal consequence for norm violation was contrary to Article 28D (1) the 1945 Constitution. They considered regional election would be unconstitutional due to it.

Therefore in petition demands, the Applicant requested the Court to order West Sumatra election commission to stop, or at least postpone 2015 West Sumatra regional election, and remove or at least postpone the enactment of West Sumatra Election Commission Decree Number 77/2015 dated August 24, 2015 concerning Stipulation of 2015 West Sumatra Participating Candidate Pairs until the Constitutional Court issued verdict on case a quo. (Lulu Anjarsari/Annisa Lestari/lul/Prasetyo Adi N)