Petition revision hearing of the judicial review of Law No. 7 of 2017 on General Elections for case No. 70/PUU-XIX/2021, Wednesday (1/26/2022). Photo by Humas MK/BPE.

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Wednesday, January 26, 2022 | 15:29 WIB

JAKARTA, Public Relations—Gatot Nurmantyo revised the judicial review petition of Law No. 7 of 2017 on General Elections (Election Law) at a panel hearing in the Constitutional Court (MK) on Wednesday, January 26, 2022.

Through legal counsel Refly Harun, he stressed that his legal standing was not changed, but he added the Court’s past rulings that granted the petitions regarding the right to elect and be elected.

In addition, the Petitioner added a contrastive analysis of dozens other countries that do not adopt presidential threshold in the presidential election. This raised the number of pages of the petition from 13 to 62.

Also read: Gatot Nurmantyo Challenges Provision on Presidential Threshold

The petition for case No. 70/PUU-XIX/2021 was filed by Gatot Nurmantyo, who had once been a Commander of the Indonesian National Armed Forces (Panglima TNI) and is an Indonesian citizen who has the right to vote based on the Election Law.

At the preliminary hearing on Tuesday, January 11, 2022, the Petitioner’s legal counsel Refly Harun explained virtually that the Petitioner challenged 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.”

The Petitioner believes that Article 222 of the Election Law is in violation of Article 6 paragraph (2) and Article 6A paragraph (5) of the 1945 Constitution, and that presidential threshold not merely procedure, but also substance.

“We filed a simple petition, simpler than one that we have filed before, where we stated that this, [explicitly], regulates the constitutional rights of political parties to nominate presidential and vice presidential candidates as long as they are election contestants, and there is no provision that states that it must be [within] 20% or must meet a certain threshold. It, once again, is a close legal policy that is not related to procedure, but to substance. Therefore, there should be no threshold at all,” Refly stressed. 

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

Translation uploaded on 01/27/2022 11:15 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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