The constitutional justices entering the courtroom for the panel judicial review hearing of Law No. 7 of 2017 on General Elections, Wednesday (1/19/2022). Photo by Humas MK/Ilham W.M.

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Wednesday, January 19, 2022 | 23:56 WIB

JAKARTA, Public Relations—Ferry Joko Yuliantono conveyed to the court revisions to his material judicial review petition of Law No. 7 of 2017 on General Elections (Election Law) through legal counsel Refly Harun at a hearing in the Constitutional Court (MK) on Wednesday, January 19, 2022. The panel hearing was presided over by Chief Justice Anwar Usman (panel chair), Constitutional Justice Arief Hidayat, and Constitutional Justice Daniel Yusmic P. Foekh.

“We have improved this petition to 59 pages, from 24 pages initially. The first thing we revised was the legal standing…. We added to it the right to be elected. So, although Ferry Joko Yuliantono had not shown his interest to run in the election as a president, it is a constitutional right that we included,” he said.

Refly also said his team had found 22 petitions in relation to presidential threshold. “In addition, … we completed the argument on the merit of the case by making comparisons. We found, for example, dozens of the countries that we observed do not adopt the presidential threshold in the elections,” he he added.

Also read: Gerindra Politician Challenges Presidential Threshold

Ferry Joko Yuliantono filed a petition for the case No. 66/PUU-XIX/2021. He challenges Article 222 of the Election Law, which reads, “A presidential candidate ticket shall be nominated by a political party (or a coalition thereof) contesting in an election that has managed to win at least 20% (twenty percent) of DPR seats or 25% (twenty-five percent) of national valid votes in the previous election of members of the DPR.”

He believes that the right to vote is a constitutional right derived from the right to participate in government as guaranteed by Article 27, Article 28D paragraph (1), and Article 28D paragraph (3) of the 1945 Constitution.

Article 222 of the Election Law, which sets the presidential threshold at 20% of DPR seats or 25% of national valid votes in the previous election of DPR members, proves to have reduced or restricted his constitutional right to vote in the presidential election and, as such, must be viewed as a constitutional impairment.

The Petitioner rejects the assumption that presidential threshold is only related to political parties although they are the only ones who can nominate presidential candidate tickets pursuant to Article 6A paragraph (2) of the Third Amendment to the 1945 Constitution. “In fact, political parties are only vehicles for presidential candidates and political party candidate for vice president, while the main beneficiaries of the implementation of presidential and vice-presidential elections are citizens, including the Petitioner,” said legal counsel Refly Harun to the justice panel at the preliminary hearing on Thursday, January 6, 2022.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CGKEo7vuN0 

Writer        : Nano Tresna Arfana
Editor        : Nur R.
PR            : Muhammad Halim
Translator  : Yuniar Widiastuti (NL)

Translation uploaded on 01/20/2022 14:09 WIB

Disclaimer: The original version of the news is in Indonesian. In case of any differences between the English and the Indonesian versions, the Indonesian version will prevail.

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