JAKARTA, LEGAL LITERACY – The Constitutional Court (MK) held a follow-up hearing with the agenda of listening to the Respondent's answers and the testimony of the Election Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) for the General Election Results Dispute (PHPU) case for prospective members of the Regional People's Representative Council (DPRD) of the Regency of the Electoral District (Dapil) of Intan Jaya 3 submitted by Julianus Agimbau, a candidate for DPRD Member from the Nasdem Party, serial number 8.

The trial with case number 126-02-05-36/PHPU.DPR-DPRD-XXII/2024 was held on Monday (06/05/2024) morning in Panel Courtroom 3 with the Panel of Constitutional Justices Arief Hidayat accompanied by Constitutional Justice Anwar Usman and Constitutional Justice Enny Nurbaningsih.

In this trial, the Respondent provided an explanation regarding the Petitioner's request, which at the preliminary hearing on Monday (29/4/2024) afternoon argued that there was a difference in votes between the election results set by the Respondent (General Election Commission) and the correct election results according to the Petitioner.

According to the Petitioner, the Petitioner's vote acquisition should have been 3,528, but according to the results set by the Respondent, the Petitioner's vote was zero. The Petitioner suspects that the difference in vote acquisition was caused by the removal of the Petitioner's votes from four villages by 3,528 votes. The reduction in votes was because the Petitioner's votes were robbed and/or removed by unscrupulous members of the District Election Committee (PPD) and members of the Voting Committee (PPS).

Heppy Verrovina, as the Respondent's legal counsel, responded that the Constitutional Court does not have the authority to examine and decide on general election process cases. Heppy mentioned that most of the contents of the Petitioner's application are related to the Election process, which is the domain of Bawaslu, or if it is a criminal act of Election, it is the authority of Gakkumdu.

“That from 7 pages of description of the subject matter of the application (pages 4-10), the most of the petitioner's arguments concern the election process (pages 6-10). Where all the arguments submitted by the Petitioner are not the Authority of the Constitutional Court, but are the Authority of Bawaslu,” said Heppy.

In addition, the Respondent also questioned the Petitioner's legal standing, where the petitioner submitted his application without being based on a recommendation from the leadership of the National Democratic Party (NasDem). The petitioner only obtained approval from the DPD of the NasDem Party in Intan Jaya Regency, Central Papua.