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.