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Legal team of the Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidate Pair Number 01 Joko Widodo-Ma’ruf Amin celebrating the ruling of the 2019 Presidential PHPU case, Thursday (27/6) in the Plenary Courtroom of the Constitutional Court. Photo by Humas MK/Ganie.

JAKARTA, Public Relations of the Constitutional Court—The Constitutional Court rejected the entire petition of the 2019 presidential and vice presidential election results dispute (PHPU) filed by Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidate Pair Number 02 Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno (Prabowo-Sandi). The ruling No. 01/PHPU-PRES/XVII/2019 was pronounced in the plenary hearing on Thursday (27/6/2019) at the Constitutional Court.

The Prabowo-Sandi ticket (Petitioner) questioned the candidacy of Vice Presidential Candidate Number 01 Ma’ruf Amin, who is registered in two state-owned banks, Bank Syariah Mandiri and BNI Syariah, as Chairperson of the Sharia Supervisory Board (DPS). Constitutional Justice Wahiduddin Adams stated, pursuant to Law No. 19 of 2003 on SOE (BUMN Law) and in order to understand the composition of the stock owners, the composition of the capital or stocks of both companies should be ascertained.

The Court believes that both companies hold no state capital or stocks, so they cannot be categorized as SOEs, but as state-owned subsidiaries, as they were established through the ownership of shares owned by SOEs. The Sharia Supervisory Board (DPS) is not known in limited companies (persero), thus, pursuant to Article 1 number 15 letters a and b and Article 32 paragraph (3) of the Sharia Banking Law, although the DPS is a board affiliated with sharia banks, they are different from commissioners that are company organs.

“Therefore, the DPS (Sharia Supervisory Board) is not part of the employees, let alone officials, of sharia banks,” Justice Wahiduddin said.

Unity

In relation to the objection of the KPU (Respondent) and the Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidate Pair Number 01 Joko Widodo-Ma’ruf Amin (Relevant Party) to the Petitioner’s petition dated June 10, 2019, Constitutional Justice Enny Nurbaningsih said that although the provision of Article 475 of Law No. 7 of 2017 does not mention petition revision, the Court accepted the petition revision submitted by the Petitioner, but not stamped it. This, Justice Enny added, was in consideration of the legal fact of the provision on the 2019 presidential PHPU and the factual issue that the Court faced in relation to long holidays.

"By considering a sense of justice and to substantially not harm justice seekers, the Court is of the opinion that the petition that the Petitioner regard as a revision is an inseparable unity with the petition submitted by the Petitioner on May 24, 2019 registered as Number 01/ARPK-PRES/PAN.MK/2019 dated June 11, 2019," explained Justice Enny before the hearing chaired by Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court Anwar Usman. 

Electoral Violations

The Petitioner argued that there were structured, systematic and massive (TSM) violations in the 2019 Presidential Election. In response to this argument, the Court stated that Law No. 7 of 2017 stipulates that the dispute over electoral violations and process is resolved by election organizers, that is the Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu). Meanwhile, Article 24C paragraph (1) of the 1945 Constitution and Article 475 paragraph (2) of Law No. 7 of 2017 explicitly stipulates that objections over election results is submitted to the Constitutional Court, only regarding the results of voting and if the institutions given electoral authorities by the Election Law do not exercise their authorities. However, if they have carried out their duties well, regardless of the results of the election, the Court has no authority to examine and decide on the qualitative petition in question.

"It is clear that the authority to resolve TSM administrative electoral violations is in the hands of Bawaslu, where it must have been resolved before the KPU determines the national vote tally," explained Constitutional Justice Manahan M. P. Sitompul in the session, which was held at the Plenary Courtroom of the Constitutional Court. 

Presidential vs DPD Situng

All nine constitutional justices read out the Court\'s legal considerations in the 2019 Presidential PHPU Decision. Constitutional Justice Saldi Isra responded to the Petitioner’s argument regarding abnormalities in the KPU’s vote count information system (Situng). The expert presented by the Petitioner had compared the vote acquisition of the presidential election and that of the election of Regional Representatives Council (DPD) members. In response, the Court is of the opinion that this is not appropriate because the DPD election was only limited to voters whose current residences were in accordance with provincial DPD regions. In fact, in the presidential and vice presidential election, there were only two candidates, whereas in the DPD election, the ballot contained a number of candidates for certain provinces, even reaching dozens and hundreds of candidates. "Based on these considerations, the Petitioner’s argument is groundless according to law," Justice Saldi said.

In the first session on Friday (14/6/2019), Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidate Pair Number 02 Prabowo Subianto-Sandiaga Uno as Petitioner claimed there had been structured, systematic, and massive (TSM) electoral violations in the 2019 presidential election. In addition, the Petitioner claimed there was a formal defect of the requirement of Vice Presidential Candidate Number 01 Ma’ruf Amin, who since the beginning of his candidacy until the preliminary hearing was still a BUMN (SOE) official. In addition, the Petitioner also argued there had been electoral violations by the Relevant Party in the 2019 presidential election on April 17. (Sri Pujianti/NRA/Yuniar Widiastuti)

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