Presidential Election Dispute Over, Legislative Election Dispute Begins

The trial stage with preliminary examination will be held until May 3, 2024. This stage will then be followed by the submission of the respondent's answer, statements from relevant parties, and witnesses from May 3-13, 2024.

Next, the trial stage will continue with the schedule of court examination on May 6-15, 2024, which includes summoning several parties to provide statements. Then, the constitutional judges will hold a Council Meeting of Judges (RPH) from May 15-20, 2024.

Following that, the next stage of the trial will conduct further examination with an allocation of time from May 27-31, 2024. The results of this additional examination will become the material for the constitutional judge panel to hold another hearing with an allocation of time from June 3-6, 2024, before ultimately reading out the verdict within the time frame of June 7-10, 2024.

With this time allocation, public attention will once again be directed to the Constitutional Court after the institution made a ruling on the presidential election dispute on Monday, April 22nd.

However, it may be that the tension is not as high as the public's attention to the presidential election dispute. This cannot be separated from the fact that disputes over the results of legislative elections mostly revolve around disputes between legislative candidates, especially within internal political parties.

Referring to data on the Constitutional Court website, the number of dispute requests for legislative elections reached 284 requests originating from legislative elections at the DPR/DPRD level and 12 requests for elections at the DPD level.

For this 12th DPD, there are 12 requests coming from the electoral districts of Riau Province, South Papua, and Central Papua, each district having 2 requests. Then there is one request each from North Kalimantan, West Sumatra, West Nusa Tenggara, Maluku, East Nusa Tenggara, and North Sumatra provinces.

When compared to the previous election, the number of legislative election dispute requests this year is much higher and has increased compared to the 2019 election which had around 261 requests.

However, compared to the 2014 and 2009 Elections, the number is much smaller. This is certainly not unrelated to the higher number of political parties participating in the elections and individual participants in the Regional Representative Council (DPD) in those two elections compared to the 2024 Election.

Also read: Are there any surprises in the Constitutional Court's decision regarding the presidential election dispute?

More legislative dispute requests were rejected

Referring to past election experiences, the number of rejected requests for legislative election disputes tends to be higher. In the 2019 Election, out of 261 request submissions, 101 of them were rejected. This number is equivalent to 39 percent, even 105 requests were declared as not acceptable.

A similar situation happened during the 2014 elections, with the number of dispute requests reaching 903. Of that amount, 676 requests were rejected.

The number of rejected applications is equivalent to 75 percent of the total number of legislative election dispute requests submitted to the Constitutional Court. In addition, there are 197 or around 22 percent of applications that cannot be accepted.

Compared to the 2014 election, there were relatively fewer applications submitted for the 2009 election. There were recorded 600 applications, and of this amount, 398 applications or around 66 percent were rejected. Not only that, 107 applications or around 18 percent were declared as unacceptable.

This means that, based on the experience of the three previous elections, only a few requests for legislative election disputes were granted by the Constitutional Court (MK). In the 2019 election, 12 requests were partially granted, or about 5 percent of the total requests.

A similar situation was recorded during the 2014 elections, when only 9 requests were granted, or equivalent to 1 percent of the total requests. Meanwhile, in 2009, the number of granted requests was relatively higher, which was 68 requests or about 11 percent of all requests submitted to the Constitutional Court.

From this data, it can be seen that it is not easy for applicants to prove the evidence they submit, which is generally related to the inflation of votes, thereby changing the composition of the acquisition of votes for legislative candidates. It is no wonder that the issue that arises is tension among fellow legislative candidates within the political party and the same electoral district.

The low number of granted requests in the legislative elections actually also occurred in the presidential and vice presidential elections. All requests for disputes regarding the presidential and vice presidential elections, from the 2004 to 2014 period, were not granted by the Constitutional Court. All requests were rejected in their entirety by the Court.

However, it must be acknowledged that something new that was recorded in the Constitutional Court's decision in the dispute over the presidential-vice presidential election in 2024 is that there was a difference of opinion between the Constitutional Court judges (dissenting opinion).

Of the eight constitutional judges who adjudicated the disputes over the election results for president and vice president, three judges declared their dissenting opinions. Nonetheless, the Constitutional Court's decision officially rejected the entire petition of the Anies-Muhaimin and Ganjar-Mahfud MD pairs.

Also read: Tracing the Track Record of Constitutional Court Decisions Regarding Presidential Election Disputes

The phenomenon of favoritism in political parties

Apart from legal disputes in the Constitutional Court, the stages of disputes over the results of the election of legislative members, both in the DPR, DPRD, and DPD, are also often colored by political tensions within the parties. This is especially true with the presence of favoritism within the party.

Simply put, this phenomenon is interpreted as the tendency of political elites to prioritize certain names of legislative candidate members on one side. As a result, on the other hand, political parties also neglect the other figures of legislative candidates.

The phenomenon of favoritism has occurred during the 2019 Election. This was seen in cases of replacement of elected legislative candidates during the 2019 Election. Several names of legislative candidates, both for the national parliament and regional parliament, fell victim to the arbitrary decisions of political parties.

Those who struggle to gain the voters' support must be willing to submit to the decision of the party that chooses other legislative candidate to occupy the legislative seats for various reasons.

One of the common modes of operation carried out by political parties is by dismissing elected candidates for certain reasons before the inauguration. Automatically, with the dismissal, the elected legislative candidates no longer meet the qualifications as legislative candidates. One of the requirements is to become a member of a political party.

In the 2019 elections, a number of elected legislative candidate names had to accept defeat when faced with political party decisions. This generally happens to candidates who do not have political access to party leaders at the central level. Meanwhile, on the other hand, there are candidates who may not have as strong access as their fellow candidate, and subsequently tend to be disadvantaged in their electoral affairs in the elections.

This symptom of favoritism certainly poses a threat to the open proportional electoral system that uses the most votes system for candidates who have the right to occupy seats won by political parties.

Moreover, the results of Kompas's R&D study and simulation which refers to the vote recapitulation of the 2024 election results show that quite a few legislative candidates actually received more votes than their party's votes.

Kompas Research and Development found something similar in the 2019 Election, which increasingly shows the influence of the strength of legislative candidates compared to their political parties.

In the end, issues surrounding sound amplification, political party favoritism, and access to party political power centers also influence the dynamics that occur in the trial of legislative election disputes.

In short, the public will again be treated to the dynamics of disputes over election results. The Constitutional Court, after the presidential election dispute is over and done with, will again start hearing the legislative election dispute. (R&D COMPAS)

Also read: Being Elected Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidates, Prabowo-Gibran Go on Safari to Strengthen the Coalition