JAKARTA, LEGAL LITERACY – The Constitutional Court (MK) held a follow-up hearing with the agenda of listening to the Respondent's answers, the Election Supervisory Body's (Bawaslu) statement, and the Relevant Party's statement for the Regional People's Representative Council (DPRD) election dispute case for prospective members of the Provincial DPRD, Electoral District (Dapil) Central Papua II, submitted by Yerry Miagoni, a prospective member of the Central Papua Provincial DPRD from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), serial number 2.

The hearing with case number 159-02-08-36/PHPU.DPR-DPRD-XXII/2024 was held on Monday (06/05/2024) morning in Panel Session Room 3 with the Panel of Judges consisting of Constitutional Justice Arief Hidayat accompanied by Constitutional Justice Anwar Usman and Constitutional Justice Enny Nurbaningsih.

In this hearing, the Respondent provided an explanation regarding the Petitioner's request, which had previously been read out at the preliminary hearing on Monday (29/4/2024) afternoon. In his petition, the Petitioner argued that there was a significant difference in the vote acquisition between the KPU's determination results and the election results that he believed to be correct.

The Petitioner stated that his vote acquisition should have been 14,870, but in the KPU's determination results, his votes were recorded as zero. The Petitioner believes that this large difference in vote acquisition is a result of fraud committed in three districts, with a total vote reduction reaching 14,870.

The alleged fraud took the form of an unlawful reduction of the Petitioner's votes. The Petitioner suspects that members of the District Election Committee (PPD) and the Polling Station Committee (PPS) were involved in the act of stealing and/or transferring votes.

Hasbullah Alimudin Hakim, as the Respondent's legal counsel, responded that the constitutional court does not have the authority to examine and decide on election dispute cases (qualitative). The election process is the authority of Bawaslu, or if there are criminal elements, it is resolved by Gakkumdu.

Hasbullah also mentioned that the Petitioner does not have the standinglegal standingto file a petition because he did not include written approval from the chairman and secretary-general of the Petitioner's party, but only obtained a recommendation of approval from the DPD in Papua.

According to the Respondent, the Petitioner's petition is vague or obscuur libel because it does not identify who is the subject in the alleged events and also does not mention the locus and tempus of the alleged (fraudulent) events.

In the main petition, the Petitioner questioned 3 districts out of 8 districts in Intan Jaya. According to the Respondent, the total valid votes that are correct according to the Respondent is zero.