TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – Researchers at the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) said that the Constitutional Court (MK) was still a ‘court of calculators’ that adjudicated presidential election disputes based on a quantitative approach.
“I think the Constitutional Court still considers a lot of margins from the vote difference between one candidate pair and another, so we can still say that the Constitutional Court is nothing more than a ‘court of calculators’,” said Perludem researcher Kahfi Adlan Hafiz when met after a discussion event in the Cikini area, Central Jakarta on Wednesday, April 24, 2024.
He explained that the Constitutional Court was still looking to explore the difference in vote acquisition results rather than the quality of evidence and the arguments of the applicant. For example, the argument of the politicization of social assistance aka social assistance to win a particular candidate pair.
“The court did not find the relevance of the distribution of social assistance to the dispute over the results. Whereas what must be proven is not only the difference in results, but for example, is there abuse? Can it have an impact on someone’s electability?” said Kahfi.
Kahfi continued, the Constitutional Court also viewed more of the petitioner’s arguments based on information from the General Election Supervisory Agency or Bawaslu. In fact, he said, the Constitutional Court in its decision said Bawaslu still prioritizes procedural in handling violations of election law.
“This means that the Constitutional Court considers procedural matters more than substantial matters,” said Kahfi.
The Constitutional Court has decided to reject the presidential election dispute petitioners, Anies Baswedan-Muhaimin Iskandar and Ganjar Pranowo-Mahfud Md. on Monday, April 22, 2024. This means that the Constitutional Court rejected all of the arguments of the two pairs of candidates.
However, three constitutional judges, namely Saldi Isra, Arief Hidayat, and Enny Nurbaningsih, had dissenting opinions. They considered that the Constitutional Court should partially grant the petition, namely by conducting re-voting in a number of areas.
This article was published on Tempo.co with the title “Perludem Calls MK Still a Court of Calculators”, https://nasional.tempo.co/read/1860335/perludem-sebut-mk-masih-jadi-mahkamah-kalkulator