The Petitioner’s legal counsel at a ruling hearing for case No. 208-02-04-04/PHPU.DPR-DPRD-XXII/2024 on the 2024 legislative election results dispute of electoral district Riau Province II, Thursday (6/6/2024) in the plenary courtroom. Photo by MKRI/Teguh.

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JAKARTA (MKRI) — The Constitutional Court (MK) rejected the 2024 DPR (House of Representatives) election results dispute petition for case No. 208-02-04-04/PHPU.DPR-DPRD-XXII/2024 on Thursday, June 6, 2024. The case was petitioned by Mohamad Idris Laena, a DPR candidate from Golkar (Party of Functional Groups).

Delivering the Court’s legal opinion, Constitutional Justice Daniel Yusmic P. Foekh asserted that after thoroughly examining the Petitioner’s evidence and juxtaposed it with evidence from the Respondent, Relevant Party, and Bawaslu (Elections Supervisory Body) as well as cross-examining the C-result forms from the polling stations, the subdistrict D-result form, and witness statements, the Court did not find differences in the vote acquisition obtained by Golkar, the Petitioner, or the Relevant Party in any of the forms as argued by the Petitioner.

Justice Foekh added the Petitioner’s witnesses testified that they had witnessed the vote counting directly at each polling station and seen the transfer of the Petitioner’s votes to Golkar because there were ballots that had been marked not only on the Petitioner’s number or name but also on Golkar’s logo, causing the Petitioner to lose votes.

“The Court asserted that the witnesses’ testimonies cannot convince the Court that there has been a transfer of the Petitioner’s votes to Golkar due to two voting marks on the name or number of the Petitioner and the logo of Golkar,” Justice Foekh said.

He also emphasized that the Court could not accept the Petitioner’s argument that the errors as it argued had occurred massively in many other places because it could not submit evidence regarding its argument. In addition, the Court found based on the incident/objection forms submitted by the Relevant Party, essentially there had been no objections from the Petitioner’s witnesses related to the arguments raised by the Petitioner. This was also supported by the supervision report by Bawaslu, which essentially stated that there were no witness reports or findings by Bawaslu in the voting and vote counting process at the polling station, subdistrict, regency/city, and provincial levels.

The Court also highlighted the Petitioner’s argument that the C-copy form had not been given to several political party witnesses, so they did not have them at the subdistrict recapitulation.

“According to the Court, the Petitioner did not specifically mention how many witnesses experienced these problems and at which polling stations the incident was experienced by the witnesses. In addition, the Petitioner also did not provide sufficient supporting evidence to strengthen the argument, therefore according to the Court, the Petitioner’s argument cannot be proven,” Justice Foekh said.

Based on the aforementioned legal considerations, the Petitioner’s argument on the reduction of the Petitioner’s votes caused by the KPPS’s (polling station working committee) inability in determining the acquisition of votes cast by voters, i.e. if a voter had voted on the symbol of a political party or the party column and also on the name of a candidate, then according to the KPPS the voter’s vote was counted as one for the political party the DPR candidate for electoral district Riau II, was legally ungrounded.

Also read:

Objection Ignored, Golkar Candidate Asks Votes in Riau II Cancelled

KPU Dismisses Golkar Candidate’s Argument

Expert Presence in Legislative PHPU Hearing for Riau II

At the preliminary hearing, the Petitioner argued that there a difference in the Petitioner’s vote acquisition in the electoral district (dapil) of Riau II, which consisted of five regencies: Kampar, Kuantan Singingi, Indragiri Hulu, Indragiri Hilir, and Pelalawan. The difference was 4,505 votes, which were in fact the Petitioner’s. The difference was caused by incidents in polling stations in the five regencies mentioned, where some ballots had already been marked and counted as the party’s votes.

Author              : Utami Argawati
Editor                : Lulu Anjarsari P.
PR                    : Fauzan Febriyan
Translator         : M. Ariva Aswin Bahar/Yuniar W.

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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