Wiranto's lawyers fail to present evidence, again

Wiranto's lawyers fail to present evidence, again

Muninggar Sri Saraswati and Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, Jakarta

For the second consecutive day, lawyers for eliminated
presidential candidate Wiranto were unable on Wednesday to
present convincing evidence of their claims that the four-star
retired Army general had been deprived of 5.4 million votes in
the July 5 election.

Their failure prompted a Constitutional Court justice to warn
the lawyers not to make false representations about their claims.

"If we were to strictly apply the law, we could actually throw
the case out of court, but we will give you another chance as we
want to see whether your claims are true or not," I Dewa Gde
Palguna, a member of the three-judge panel, told the lawyers.

The panel was hearing a complaint by Wiranto and running mate
Solahuddin Wahid that the pair had been deprived of 5.4 million
votes in 26 provinces due to irregularities in the vote count
after the July 5 election.

Wiranto came third behind Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and
Megawati Soekarnoputri in the official tally of the July 5
election and was thus eliminated from the presidential race.

Should the Constitutional Court accept his claims, he would
take over from Megawati in second place and thus qualify to
contest the runoff election on Sept. 20.

Attempting to explain their failure to present evidence yet
again, Wiranto's lawyers said that they did not have the
documents setting out the results of the presidential election as
local election commission (KPUD)s had not given copies to their
tallymen across the country.

When Palguna said that they could show documents backing up
their claims of irregularities in the election results to the
Election Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu), lawyer Albert Sagala
admitted that they did not have these documents either.

"This is a formal hearing. If you don't have any evidence, we
will have to see if you have been making false representations,"
Palguna warned. Making false representations to a court is
punishable with 16 months in prison.

In another hearing, Syamsul, a witness presented by Wiranto's
lawyers in support of their claims, testified that he had not
filed an objection to the results of the election in a district
in Southeast Sulawesi.

According to Syamsul, who is also chairman of the Golkar Party
in Lengata subdistrict in Southeast Sulawesi, the election
committee had conducted a vote recount.

"I followed the process and I signed the document approving
the results of the election as I found nothing wrong with it," he
told a panel of five justices.

The lawyers had earlier said that Wiranto had been deprived of
32,126 votes in Southeast Sulawesi due to the fact that the vote
recount was conducted two days after polling day.

The court is expected to finish examining the evidence on
Thursday and plans to had down its decision on Monday.

Meanwhile, President Megawati Soekarnoputri said on Wednesday
that she had no intention of intervening in the ongoing electoral
hearings in the Constitutional Court.

"The Constitutional Court has been given the power to resolve
electoral disputes, I will let the process run its course and
will not interfere," Megawati said as quoted by Islamic Students
Association (HMI) chairman Hasanuddin on Wednesday.