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 candidates for members of the Regional People's Representative Council (DPRD) of Intan Jaya Regency, Intan Jaya Electoral District (Dapil) 3, submitted by Akulius Widigipa, a candidate for Member of the DPRD of Intan Jaya Regency from the National Mandate Party (PAN) with serial number 2.

The trial with case number 141-02-12-36/PHPU.DPR-DPRD-XXII/2024 was held in Panel 3 Hearing Room on Monday (07/05/2024) with the Panel of Judges consisting of Constitutional Justice 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 in the previous preliminary hearing argued that there was a significant difference between the votes stipulated by the KPU and the data possessed by the Petitioner. The Petitioner claimed that he should have obtained 3,744 votes, but the KPU recorded that he did not get any votes or zero.

Nyoman Yustita P. Rahardjo as legal counsel for the KPU in the exception stated that the description of the Petitioner's arguments which essentially stated that there were actions by members of the Polling Committee (PPS) and the District Election Committee (PPD) who intentionally eliminated the Petitioner's votes and transferred them to other candidates in the same party as many as 3,744 votes in the Intan Jaya III Electoral District specifically in the Biandoga sub-district which was spread across 16 (sixteen) polling stations in 5 (five) villages. Furthermore, the events as argued in the Petitioner's application can actually be qualified as alleged election crimes as regulated and threatened with criminal sanctions in the provisions of Article 551 of Law No. 7 of 2017 concerning General Elections. Thus, the Constitutional Court does not have the authority to examine and adjudicate this case.

In addition, according to Nyoman Yustita P. Rahardjo, the Petitioner's application is unclear (obscuur libel) because the Petitioner cannot explain the details of the transfer of the Petitioner's votes in each polling station from the 16 (sixteen) polling stations in question, which according to the Petitioner were completely eliminated, totaling 3,744 (three thousand seven hundred and forty-four) votes. However, in comparing the vote acquisition data explained by the Petitioner in the table in question, the Petitioner cannot explain and describe in detail that the Petitioner's votes have been transferred to Candidate Number 9 in the name of Tomas Agimbau, who is another candidate in the same party in the Intan Jaya III Electoral District.