Fraud Claims Not Proven, Risma-Gus Hans' Lawsuit at the Constitutional Court Fails

JAKARTA, KOMPAS – The Constitutional Court declared that the candidate pair for governor and deputy governor of East Java, Tri Rismaharini and Zahrur Azhar Asumta, do not have legal standing to file a lawsuit regarding the East Java regional election results to the constitutional court.

The vote difference between Risma-Gus Hans and the winning candidate pair in the regional election, Khofifah Indar Parawangsa-Emil Dardak, is too large, reaching 26.3 percent of the total valid votes, far exceeding the threshold to file a dispute, which is 0.5 percent.

In the case filed by Risma-Gus Hans, the Constitutional Court did not find any reason to disregard the enforcement of the provisions of Article 158 of Law Number 10 of 2016 concerning Regional Elections, which regulates the threshold requirements for filing disputes between 0.5 percent to 2 percent of valid votes.

The arguments of fraud presented to postpone the implementation of Article 158, submitted by the legal team of Risma-Gus Hans, were refuted. The Constitutional Court (MK) assessed that there was no evidence convincing enough to allow the Risma-Gus Hans lawsuit to proceed to the next stage of the trial.

With the Constitutional Court's decision, the victory of Khofifah-Emil in the 2024 East Java Regional Election becomes legitimate, in accordance with the vote count previously determined by the East Java General Election Commission, which is 12,192,165 votes. Meanwhile, Risma-Gus Hans obtained 6,743,095 votes, and another candidate pair in the East Java Regional Election, Luluk Nur Hamidah-Lukmanul Khakim, garnered 1,797,332 votes. The total valid votes reached 20,732,592 votes.

In their petition, the legal team of Risma-Gus Hans alleged manipulation of the vote percentage for candidate pair number 2, Khofifah-Emil, in the Recapitulation Information System (Sirekap) which remained stable at 58.54 percent.

Regarding this argument, the Constitutional Court considers that such a situation is not impossible. However, this cannot be immediately interpreted as data manipulation, considering that Sirekap is based on real data submitted from each polling station. Moreover, Sirekap data is actually adjusted to the manual counting or recapitulation data obtained in stages.

"Thus, even if there are anomalies or technical issues with Sirekap, as long as it cannot be proven that such problems affect the votes of the candidate pairs conducted through the tiered manual counting mechanism, it is also not proven that there is manipulation of Sirekap as alleged by the petitioner," said Deputy Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court Saldi Isra while reading the legal considerations.

The Constitutional Court also rejected the argument of the Risma-Gus Hans legal team which stated that there had been manipulation of the C model form results by deleting the results of candidate pair number 1, Luluk Nur Hamidah-Lukmanul Khakim, and number 3, Risma-Hans, and sending a follow-up version of the C document results which was different from the initial version.

Because, the Constitutional Court actually found that the applicant's witnesses also gave their signatures on the questioned model C form. In addition, there was no record of objection to the follow-up model C form questioned by the applicant.

"Even if the C form of the Governor's KWK results is the result of quad non manipulation, the total number of votes in the 30 TPS claimed by the applicant is not significant enough to influence the vote acquisition of the candidate pair," said Saldi.

Likewise, when the applicant questioned the high level of voter participation which averaged 90 percent to 100 percent of the Permanent Voters List (DPT), the discrepancy between the number of voters for the East Java Pilkada and the East Java Pilbup/Pilwalkot in several TPS, and the low number of votes obtained by the applicant in several TPS. Again, the Constitutional Court stated that the Risma-Gus Hans legal team could not convince the Constitutional Court that the phenomenon occurred unlawfully.

Likewise, when the Risma-Gus Hans legal team questioned the high number of invalid votes which reached 5.5 percent, which was a figure greater than the district head and mayoral elections in East Java.

The Constitutional Court assessed that the applicant was unable to clearly construct an argument as to whether the invalid ballots did not meet the provisions of Article 35 of PKPU No. 17/2024 or whether there was unlawful intervention or manipulation by the election organizers in determining whether the votes were valid or invalid.

"Thus, according to the Court, the applicant's argument did not convince the Court that the very large number of invalid ballots was related to the reduction of the applicant's vote acquisition. Moreover, the number of invalid ballots in question could not be proven convincingly to only reduce the vote acquisition of a particular candidate pair," said Saldi.

Likewise, the argument is that the Family Hope Program (PKH) social assistance is being used for electoral interests that benefit certain candidate pairs.

The Constitutional Court considered that the view was only an assumption unless it could be proven by the applicant that there was a real connection between the PKH social assistance distributed and the vote acquisition of one of the candidate pairs. It also needed to be proven regarding the parties involved, then in what way the social assistance was used to influence the recipient community to choose a particular candidate pair.

"Based on the description of the legal considerations above, the Court is of the opinion that the arguments in the aquo application are legally baseless," said Saldi firmly.