The ruling hearing for case No. 309/PHPU.GUB-XXIII/2025 on the 2024 Central Papua governor election results dispute, Wednesday, (2/5/2025). Photo by MKRI/Ifa.

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JAKARTA (MKRI) — The Petition for Case No. 309/PHPU.GUB-XXIII/2025 concerning the dispute over the 2024 Central Papua governor election results was declared inadmissible by the Constitutional Court (MK). The verdict on the case filed by Candidate Pair Number 1 Wempi Wetipo and Agustinus Anggaibak was read out at the ruling hearing on Wednesday, February 5, 2025. The hearing took place in the plenary courtroom, with Chief Justice Suhartoyo and the other eight constitutional justices presiding.

“[The Court] adjudicated, on the petition’s subject matter: declares the Petitioners’ petition inadmissible,” stated Chief Justice Suhartoyo when reading out the verdict.

The Court made this decision because the Petitioners did not meet the threshold requirement for the difference in vote results. Based on Article 158 of Law No. 10 of 2016, the threshold required to submit a Central Papua Province election results dispute is 2 percent or the equivalent of 22,105 votes.

However, the Petitioners obtained 122,246 votes. Meanwhile, the Relevant Party, Candidate Number 3 Meki Nawipa and Deinas Geley obtained 502,624 votes. Therefore, the difference between the two was 380,378 votes or 34.4 percent.

Because the margin did not meet the threshold requirement, the Petitioners were considered not to have legal standing to file the petition.

“The Petitioners did not have legal standing to file the petition. Thus, the Respondent’s exception and the Relevant Party’s exception that the Petitioners did not have legal standing were legally justified,” explained Constitutional Justice M. Guntur Hamzah when reading out the Court’s considerations.

The applicability of Article 158 was not ruled out because the Petitioners could not convince the Court of the validity of their arguments. “Moreover, the Court did not find any special circumstances,” said Justice Guntur.

The Petitioners claimed the Central Papua Provincial KPU (General Elections Commission) as Respondent’s delay in the announcement of the vote count recapitulation results was a form of structured, systematic, and massive (TSM) violation. They claimed that the votes gained in the areas with a one-man-one-vote system hadbeen high. However, in areas that used the noken* system, the vote gain was low.  They also argued to have been blocked during the campaign period, specifically in Dogiyai, Deiyai, and Paniai Regencies. The Petitioners even claimed to have been asked for money at the time.

The Petitions on dispute of the 2024 Central Papua governor election results were also filed by two other candidate pairs: Candidate Pair Number 4 Willem Wandik and Aloisius Giyai (Case Number 295/PHPU.GUB-XXIII/2025) and Candidate Pair Number 2 Natalis Tabuni and Titus Natkime (Case Number 308/PHPU.GUB-XXIII/2025).

(*) The noken voting system is carried out by communities in Papua, either through public agreement on vote allocation or through the delegation of votes to a tribal leader.

Author               : Ashri Fadilla
Editor                : Tiara Agustina  
Translator         : Dinita Aktivia/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.

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