Court Dismisses Petition on Ternate Mayoral Election Results Dispute
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The Petitioners’ legal counsel Fadly S. Tuanany attending the ruling hearing for Case No. 42/PHPU.BUP-XXIII/2025 on the Ternate mayoral election results dispute, Tuesday (2/4/2025). Photo by MKRI/Teguh.


JAKARTA (MKRI) — The Court dismissed the petition for case 42/PHPU.WAKO-XXIII/2025 on the 2024 Ternate mayoral election results dispute, filed by regent-vice regent candidate pair 4 Muhammad Syahril Abd. Radjak and Makmur Gamgulu. Chief Justice Suhartoyo delivered the verdict at the ruling hearing for this case on Tuesday, February 4, 2025.

Chief Justice Suhartoyo further explained that the Petitioners’ petition did not meet the formal requirements for filing the petition and declared the Petitioners’ petition obscured. Therefore, the Respondent’s and Relevant Party’s exceptions, arguing the Petitioners’ petition was obscured, were legally sound.

“[The Court] adjudicated, rejects the exception on the [Court’s] authority or the deadline for filing the petition. On the petition’s subject matter: to declare the Petitioners’ petition inadmissible,” said Chief Justice Suhartoyo delivering the verdict alongside the other eight constitutional justices.

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At the preliminary hearing on January 14, 2025, the Petitioners requested the Court to annul the Ternate KPU (Elections Commission) Decree No. 409 of 2024 on the certification of the 2024 mayoral election results. The vote acquisition of each candidate pair according to the KPU as Respondent was as follows: Candidate Pair 1 Santrani M.S. Abusama-Bustamin S. Abdul Latif obtained 3,498 votes, Candidate Pair 2 Moh. Tauhid Soleman-Nasri Abubakar won 45,658 votes, Candidate Pair 3 Erwin Umar-Zulkifli Hi. Umar received 11,716 votes, and the Petitioners received 34,416 votes.

The Petitioners believed that Regent Candidate 2 Tauhid Soleman, who is an incumbent, had taken advantage of the power of the Ternate City ASN through local government programs three months before the election. The Ternate government also distributed assistance through departments, driven by the incumbent and regional secretary, while also attended by their campaign team. In fact, based on the Petitioners’ observation, events involving bureaucracy were very intensively performed in order to influence voters to vote for certain candidate pairs. For this reason, the Petitioner requests that the Court disqualify Candidate Pair Number 02 Moh. Tauhid Soleman-Nasri Abubakar from the election; to order the Respondent to conduct a revote at 176 polling stations in two districts, at 76 polling stations in Central Ternate District and at 100 polling stations in South Ternate District.

Author               : Sri Pujianti
Editor                : Fitri Yuliana
Translator         : Ryan Alfian/Yuniar Widiastuti (RA)

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.


Wednesday, February 05, 2025 | 00:01 WIB 18