The Respondent’s legal counsel Jou Hasyim Waimahing delivering a statement at a follow-up hearing for the 2024 legislative election results dispute of West Java, Wednesday (5/8/2024). Photo by MKRI/Ifa.

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JAKARTA (MKRI) — The hearing of the 2024 legislative election results dispute (PHPU) of West Java Province I House of Representatives (DPR) and Bekasi City 2 Regional Legislative Council (DPRD), was held again by the Constitutional Court (MK) on Wednesday, May 8, 2024 in the plenary courtroom. The case is registered with Case No. 90-01-05-12/PHPU.DPR-DPRD-XXII/2024.

In the hearing, Ali Nurdin as the legal counsel from the General Elections Commission (KPU) denied the arguments of the Petitioner, accusing it of deliberately violating the principle of honesty and fairness as in Article 3 of the Election Law.

"The Respondent has conducted tiered vote counting and recapitulation starting from the polling station (TPS), subdistrict, regency, provincial to the national level in an open manner. All objections from the Petitioner at each level of recapitulation have been responded to by the Respondent and any recommendations from Elections Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) due to reports or objections from the Petitioner have also been followed up by the Respondent," he said.

In addition, the Respondent also explained that the Plenary Meeting for the Recapitulation of National Vote Acquisition Results for West Java Province was held on March 19, 2024, attended by witnesses of political parties, Bawaslu and West Java Province Bawaslu, namely the Petitioner's Witness, Golkar Party witnesses and Bawaslu of the Republic of Indonesia and Bawaslu of West Java.

In its written response, KPU explained that the Petitioner's objection regarding the vote acquisition and the Party of Functional Groups (Golkar) in West Java Electoral District (Dapil) I, especially in Bandung City, was initiated by the Petitioner's objection during the recapitulation in Bandung City. Although during the recapitulation at the Batununggal Subdistrict level, he did not convey his objection and accepted the results of the subdistrict level recapitulation in Batununggal Subdistrict, but he conveyed his objection at the Plenary Meeting of the Recapitulation at the City KPU level. The Petitioner’s witness rejected the offer of the Bandung City KPU to make corrections by comparing the data according to the objections of the Petitioner’s witness, so the objections raised by the Petitioner during the city level recapitulation at the Bandung City KPU were considered to have been completed.

On the same occasion, Golkar as a Related Party represented by Daniel Tonapa Masiku emphasized that it rejected the arguments of the Petitioner contained in the posita and petitum because they were baseless, legally unreasonable and tended to be misleading, except for the arguments that were expressly recognized as true by the Related Party and did not harm the legal interests of the Related Party.

"The Related Party needs to emphasize that the recapitulation of the tiered vote count carried out by the Respondent is correct and carried out according to procedures where every party witness's objection has been followed up by the organizing officer, even at several subdistrict level plenary meetings has been carried out to open the ballot boxes for counting ballots as a follow-up to the objections of party witnesses," he said.

Meanwhile, the United Development Party (PPP) as a Related Party filed that the petition is obscuur libel (unclear) because the arguments of the posita and petitum do not correspond to each other. Because between the posita and petitum do not correspond to each other, the legal fact is obtained that the petition becomes unclear. Then, in his petition has postulated the difference in vote acquisition between the Petitioner and the related parties in connection with the reduction and addition of the Petitioner’s votes carried out by the PPP (related parties) number 4 of the petition is not true, because the difference in votes of the related parties determined by the Petitioner’s votes were 14.206 votes, while the Petitioner’s votes were 12,558 votes, the total difference should have been 1,648 votes, not 1,636 votes as argued in the table of the petition. the difference above has made the petition unclear.

Bawaslu’s Statement

In his statement, Zacky Muhamad Zam Zam said that the West Java Provincial Bawaslu had received a report on alleged violations of election crimes reported by Selly Nurdinah related to indications/allegations of deliberate obstruction of the process of correcting the actual counting results at the provincial level plenary. There are allegations or indications of involvement of the West Java Provincial KPU in actions that cause a reduction in the National Democratic Party (NasDem) vote acquisition in a number of polling stations in Bandung City.

Then based on the results of the clarification and discussion of the West Java Provincial Gakkumdu (Integrated Law Enforcement), it was concluded that the report did not fulfill the elements of election crimes as referred to in Article 505 in conjunction with Article 532 of Law No. 7 of 2017 concerning Elections, so that the report could not be continued to the Investigation stage by the Police.

Also read: Votes Switched to Golkar, NasDem Asks West Java I Tally Canceled

Author               : Utami Argawati
Editor                : Lulu Anjarsari P.
PR                    : Andhini S.F.
Translator         : Jessica Rivena Meilania

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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