JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com – The Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) assesses that the Constitutional Court (MK) needs to look at the potential for vote buying in the 2024 legislative election dispute involving the United Development Party (PPP) and the Garuda Party.
In its petition to the Constitutional Court, the PPP argued that there was an inflation and reduction of votes to the Garuda Party.
“This must be examined by the Constitutional Court. Do not let there be a transactional process carried out between the petitioner (PPP) and the related party (Garuda), which then seems to be a legal fact that the Constitutional Court then grants and it affects the results of the PPP,” said Perludem researcher Ihsan Maulana in the release of their research results on Monday (20/5/2024).
Based on the vote acquisition for the 2024 legislative elections of the DPR RI as determined by the KPU, PPP was only able to get 5,878,777 (3.87 percent) votes, which made them threatened with not getting a seat in Senayan with a 4 percent threshold.
Meanwhile, the Garuda Party received 0.27 percent of the votes in the 2024 legislative elections or 406,883 votes.
Ihsan believes that parties whose votes are far from the parliamentary threshold and have spent a lot of money will not hesitate to sell their votes during the vote recapitulation process.
He fears that such parties will sell their votes by manipulating them into legal facts.
“PPP’s case with the related party Garuda is not enough until the examination process that occurred today,” Ihsan said.
“There needs to be a further stage, namely the evidentiary examination process, which the Constitutional Court will conduct in the next two weeks,” he said.
For information, the Constitutional Court plans to read out the dismissal decision on the disputed lawsuits over the results of the 2024 legislative elections that entered the Constitutional Court on May 21-22, 2024.
The panel of judges will hold a Judge Consultation Meeting (RPH) to determine the fate of the parties’ dispute applications, whether the lawsuit will proceed to the evidentiary stage or not.
Deputy Chairman of the Constitutional Court Saldi Isra ensured that in cases that based on the RPH would proceed to the evidentiary hearing, the Constitutional Court would inform all parties involved, especially regarding what needed to be prepared for proof at the hearing.
For information, the Constitutional Court received 297 disputes over the 2024 legislative elections which were registered as cases to be heard and adjudicated within 30 working days or a maximum of being decided on June 10, 2024.
The number is divided into disputes over the legislative elections of the DPR RI, DPD RI, provincial DPRDs, and district / city DPRDs.
Due to the large number of incoming cases, the nine constitutional judges will be divided into 3 panels, so that each dispute case will be heard by a panel of 3 judges.
Along the way, some of the lawsuits were revoked by the applicants through their attorneys. Meanwhile, KPU RI as the respondent in the 2024 legislative election dispute is working with 8 law firms to face hundreds of disputes in the 2024 legislative election.
This article has been published on Kompas.com with the title “Prevent Vote Buying, Perludem Asks Constitutional Court to Continue PPP-Parties Garuda Dispute to Proof”, https://nasional.kompas.com/read/2024/05/20/14290261/cegah-jual-beli-suara-perludem-minta-mk-lanjutkan-sengketa-ppp-partai-garuda.