Experts Ramlan Surbakti and former Panwaslu member Didik Supriyanto presented by the Court and the Petitioner, respectively, delivering their expertise in the judicial review hearing of the Election Law, Monday (13/1) in the Plenary Courtroom of the Constitutional Court. Photo by Humas MK/Gani.
JAKARTA, Public Relations of the Constitutional Court—Three experts gave their statements in the judicial review hearing of the provisions regarding simultaneous elections in Law Number 7 of 2017 on General Elections. The hearing of cases No. 37/PUU-XVII/2019 and 55/PUU-XVII/2019 took place on Monday (13/1/2020) in the Plenary Courtroom of the Constitutional Court. The two cases were heard in the same session because of the similarity of the material being challenged.
They are Article 167 paragraph (3) along the phrase “the voting shall be implemented simultaneously” and Article 347 paragraph (1) along the phrase “the voting of the election shall be implemented simultaneously.” Aside from challenging the Election Law, the Petitioners of case No. 55/PUU-XVII/2019 also challenge the provision of simultaneous elections in Law No. 8 of 2015 on the Amendment to Law No. 1 of 2015 on the Ratification of the Regulation In Lieu of Law No. 1 of 2014 on the Election of Governors, Regents, and Mayors, as well as Law No. 10 of 2016 on the Second Amendment to the Amendment of Law No. 1 of 2015 on the Ratification of the Regulation In Lieu of Law No. 1 of 2014 on the Election of Governors, Regents, and Mayors (Pilkada Law).
Three experts Didik Supriyanto, Khairul Fahmi, and Ramlan Surbakti were presented in court. Former Panwaslu member Didik Supriyanto was presented by the Petitioners. He stated that simultaneous elections promote a congruent government as it forces political parties to form coalitions prior to the elections.
“Simultaneous elections have various effects, that is, the tendency to choose the president and the president’s interest affect the selection and electability of members of the parliament. The electability of presidential candidate A affects the electability of candidate members of the parliament from political parties or party coalitions that nominate presidential candidate A,” explain Didik to the panel of justices.
Didik said that the ineffective government in the SBY era was due to the separation of the presidential and legislative elections, which brought about the Constitutional Court Decision No. 14/PUU-XI/2013. “The decision declares that the separation of the presidential and legislative elections was unconstitutional. The Constitutional Court ordered that the two elections be held simultaneously in 2019. The objective of the decision was to reinforce the presidential system,” Didik explained.
In practice, Didik added, the 2019 Simultaneous Elections only organized presidential and legislative elections without regional head election. This resulted in division in the provincial and regency/city administrations.
“Learning from the 2019 Elections, the solution to the division in the provincial and regency/city administrations is to include the regional head election of governors, regents, and mayors. Therefore, national total simultaneous elections are required,” Didik added.
The Petitioners also presented a constitutional law expert from Andalas University Khairul Fahmi. “The simultaneous elections with five ballot boxes have various serious issues that required overall evaluation. The issues are not only related to technical management and execution, but also the substance of the elections, that is, the purity of the voting right of citizens as the concrete form of people’s sovereignty,” Khairul said.
Khairul added that the Constitutional Court Decision No. 14/PUU-XI/2013 in which the Court ordered simultaneous elections in 2019 actually received broad support from constitutional law experts, political experts, and even the public.
"In this decision, the Court’s argument that received the most support was the reason for the correlation between the design of the electoral system and the presidential government system. The design of the simultaneous presidential and legislative elections will contribute to strengthening the presidential government system," Khairul explained.
In this hearing, the Constitutional Court presented an expert, former General Election Commission (KPU) chairman for 2004-2007, Ramlan Surbakti. Ramlan highlighted the many problems that arose during the vote counting process, preparation of protocol documents, and waste of human resources and funds.
"The voting and counting process must be done transparently, witnessed by witnesses, supervisors, monitoring institutions, and all people can be present outside the polling stations. That must be considered," said Ramlan.
However, he said that simultaneous election would result in the long and expensive vote counting process.
The petition No. 37/PUU-XVII/2019 was filed by election observer Arjuna Pemantau Pemilu and several others in relation to simultaneous elections. The Petitioners argue that facts empirically show that the 2019 Simultaneous Elections had resulted in many casualties among election organizers.
According to the Petitioners, the current socio-political conditions and community phenomena lead to demands to evaluate the implementation of simultaneous elections. Medical Emergency Rescue Committee (MER-C) recorded 544 election administrators (KPPS, Panwaslu and Police) had died and 3,788 people had fallen ill. MER-C even declared it a humanitarian disaster.
According to the Petitioners, there were excess expenses amounting to 9.8 trillion rupiah. This has violated the mandate of Article 28H paragraph (1) in conjunction with Article 28I paragraph (4) of the 1945 Constitution, because the budget is taken from the State Revenue and Expenditure Budget (APBN) from citizens\' taxes, which should be used as much as possible for the welfare and prosperity of the people.
The case Number 55/PUU-XVII/2019 was petitioned by the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem), who argued that the design of the five-box elections resulted in the weak position of the president in aligning the government agendas with development agendas. This is because the regional head election is not synchronized with the election of the Regional Legislative Council (DPRD).
In addition, according to the Petitioners, the regional head is an extension of the central government as well as the organizer of regional autonomy. They will face changing political configurations when the regional head election is not synchronized with the DPRD election, both provincial and regency/city.
The Petitioners also argue that the five-box simultaneous elections on April 17, 2019 proved to have various issues resulting from inadequate, immeasurable legal framework and not following the principles of democratic elections. In addition, the elections resulted in higher number of invalid votes and the decrease of representation. (Nano Tresna Arfana/NRA)
Translated by: Yuniar Widiastuti
Tuesday, January 14, 2020 | 13:32 WIB 186