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.

“The petitioner, as he admitted at the preliminary hearing, only obtained approval from the DPD of the NasDem Party in Intan Jaya Regency, therefore the petitioner does not have the legal standing to submit the application and therefore the petitioner's application must be declared inadmissible,” said the KPU's Legal Counsel.

The Respondent in the trial stated that the Petitioner's application contained a legal defect called obscuur libel. This is because there is a lack of clarity between the description conveyed by the Petitioner in the posita (reasons for the lawsuit) and the petitum (demands) submitted.

In more detail, the Petitioner in the posita explained that there was a difference in vote acquisition between himself and other legislative members from the NasDem Party in Dapil Intan Jaya 3. The Petitioner suspects that his vote acquisition should have been 3,528, but in the KPU's determination results, his votes were recorded as zero.

However, in his petitum, the Petitioner only demands that his vote acquisition be changed to 3,528. The Respondent assesses that this petitum is unclear because the Petitioner does not explain explicitly where the votes that should have been were lost and transferred to which serial number candidate. Due to this lack of clarity, the Respondent argues that the Petitioner's application contains obscuur libel and should be rejected by the panel of judges.

In its response, the Respondent stated that Julianus Agimbau did not obtain any votes or zero according to the D-Result of the Regency/City. This means that the Petitioner's argument that the Petitioner's votes were 3,528 votes is incorrect because the Petitioner's vote acquisition for Dapil Intan Jaya 3 was zero.

“According to the Respondent, the vote acquisition for Julianus Agimbau is zero according to the D-Result of the Regency/City. And the claim of acquiring 3,528 votes is incorrect,” said Heppy Verrovina.

Based on the description in the Respondent's Answer, the Respondent requests the Court to grant it in full in the Exception and in the Subject Matter of the case, to reject all of the petitioner's requests and to declare KPU Decree Number 360 of 2024 correct.

Bawaslu, in its statement, explained that the vote acquisition that had been conveyed by the Respondent was the same as Bawaslu's Notes, namely based on C-Results and D-Results, the entire sub-district-regency was zero.

“Based on the C-Results and D-Results of the Sub-district and Regency, all are zero,” said Yonas Yanampa.