Court welcomes electoral dispute cases
Court welcomes electoral dispute cases
Muninggar Sri Saraswati, Jakarta
The Constitutional Court announced on Tuesday its readiness to
hear challenges to the results of the legislative election filed
by political parties and Regional Representatives candidates on
Wednesday.
"By the time the KPU announces the final results, we will have
opened the registration of electoral dispute cases,"
Constitutional Court President Jimly Asshidiqie told a press
conference.
The General Elections Commission (KPU) is expected to announce
the results of the manual count, the only method recognized by
the law, at 10 a.m. on Wednesday.
The complaints registration process, according to the
Constitutional Court Law, should take place three days at the
latest after the KPU announces the election results.
Jimly, therefore, urged the central boards of the 24 political
parties that contested the April 5 election to prepare documents
and witnesses before filing their complaints with the court.
"Please be ready and make the necessary preparations for the
technical procedures required when filing a complaint against the
KPU. Don't talk solely about coalitions," he said, referring to
the ongoing moves by a number of political parties to forge
coalitions for the presidential election in July.
The court has twice invited all the political parties to
meetings to brief them about the procedures for challenging the
election results, but most of them failed to send
representatives.
The court has also sent out guidelines to the parties telling
them how they should go about filing complaints.
Despite these efforts, as of Tuesday morning the court had
received over 100 complaints from regional branches of political
parties across the country. They said they had filed the
complaints as they did not know what the procedures were.
According to the Constitutional Court Law, the court only has
jurisdiction to hear electoral complaints filed by the central
boards of political parties.
"We will reject a case if the petitioner fails to satisfy the
administrative requirements. If that happens, it will be their
fault," Jimly asserted.
The court has divided its judges up into several teams to
enable it to register all complaints over a period of 24 hours.
The court's decisions are final and binding.
Should the Constitutional Court rules in against a political
party in an electoral dispute case, then its seat in the House of
Representatives will be handed over to another party.
In the past electoral disputes were left unsettled.
The new arrangements follow last year's establishment of the
Constitutional Court, which is given the jurisdiction to, among
other things, conduct judicial reviews of the constitutionality
of laws, hear electoral disputes and rule on House motions
impeaching the president.