The Respondent's legal counsel Budi Rahman assisted the Respondent (Bawaslu) in attending the continued hearing of Case No. 15-01-14-25/PHPU.DPR-DPRD-XXII/2024 PHPU of the 2024 DPR (House of Representatives), Provincial and Regency/City DPRD (Regional Legislative Council) with the agenda of listening to the Respondent's answers and information from the Election Supervisory Body (Bawaslu). Tuesday (5/14/2024). Photo by MKRI / Bayu.
JAKARTA (MKRI) — The Constitutional Court (MK) held a continued hearing on the Dispute over the Election Results Dispute (PHPU) of the 2024 DPR, DPRD (PHPU DPR) submitted by the Democratic Party for the filling of Candidates for the Regency / City DPRD in North Sulawesi Province 1 Kotamobagu City DPRD. The hearing of Case No. 15-01-14-25/PHPU.DPR-DPRD-XXII/2024 was carried out by Panel 3 presided over by Constitutional Justice Arief Hidayat, with the Constitutional Justices Anwar Usman and Enny Nurbaningsih, on Tuesday (14/5/2024). The agenda of the hearing was to listen to the Respondent's (KPU) answer, the relevant party's statement, and Bawaslu's statement, as well as the ratification of evidence.
KPU Response
The Respondent (KPU) in its response stated that the Petitioner's petition did not meet the formal requirements of registration due to an error in the object of the lawsuit (objectum litis). According to the Respondent, the Petitioner has misstated the number of the official report of the determination of the results of the general election of DPR nationally. Then, the Petition was also formally defective because the Petitioner only applied without being equipped with a power of attorney and evidence.
"The allegations submitted by the Petitioner are unclear or vague, and repeat cases, and make improper data comparisons so that they do not meet the requirements of an Petition, and therefore must be declared unacceptable," said the Respondent's legal counsel, Budi Rahman.
Then, regarding the allegation of inflating votes that should have received 1,277 votes to 1,322 votes, aimed at winning the NasDem Party, is an unfounded accusation, because the data used by the Petitioner relies on the vote recapitulation information system (Sirekap) data which is only a recapitulation tool. Meanwhile, the data used by the Respondent is valid data sourced from the results of tiered recapitulation, and there are no objections from witnesses of election participants related to the results of the vote acquisition. Therefore, the Petitioner's request can be said to be unclear and unfounded.
The Petitioner has repeatedly accused the Respondent of fraud, and the allegations are unfounded and it is not proven that the Respondent inflated the votes, however, after reading and examining the Petitioner's arguments, there is no clear description of when, where, who, and how the Respondent committed fraudulent vote inflation as alleged by the Petitioner. The Petitioner's arguments are also unclear because they do not include a comparative table of vote acquisition and do not contain an explanation of the correct vote count error according to the Petitioner.
Bawaslu's Response
Bawaslu Kotamobagu City, represented by Steffen Linu in his statement, emphasized that he had never received reports and findings related to violations of election results, so Bawaslu Kotamobagu City did not handle violations or resolve disputes over the election process. Then, the Kotamobagu City Bawaslu has carried out preventive duties by submitting corrective suggestions No. 33a/PM.00.01/K.SA-13/2/2024 on Request for Explanation and Suggestions for Improvement on February 19, 2023, which basically asks the Kotamobagu City KPU to explain the information on rescheduling the sub-district level recapitulation and optimizing Sirekap which caused the plenary meeting to be suspended and rescheduled.
Also read: Democrat Discloses Electoral Violations in Kotamobagu 1
Author : Siti Rosmalina Nurhayati.
Editor : Nur R.
Translator : Frity Michael Br Sembiring
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.