JakartaPost-March 22, 2024
With the final vote tally confirming a decisive win for Prabowo, his rivals’ legal teams are scrambling for a revote and an opportunity to set the record straight. Presidential hopeful Anies Baswedan wasted no time challenging rival Prabowo Subianto’s runaway election victory at the Constitutional Court on Thursday, with the similarly fated Ganjar Pranowo expected to follow suit in the coming days as they hope to expose large-scale fraud in the polls. The two losing camps have three days from the announcement of the official election returns to mount a legal challenge that will play out in the nation’s top court over the next few weeks. With Wednesday’s final vote tally confirming a decisive win for Prabowo and his running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka, Anies’ legal team has submitted hundreds of pages of documents to the court as part of a bid to disqualify Gibran and force a revote. Ari Yusuf Amir, a member of the Anies-Muhaimin Iskandar campaign team tapped to lead the legal efforts, submitted the dossier to the court clerks, just hours after Prabowo’s late-night victory speech on Wednesday. In a copy of the document submitted to the court and obtained by The Jakarta Post, the team’s claim will be built around Gibran’s candidacy, among other issues. “We are hoping for a revote, but without [Gibran]. Whoever the replacement is, let us [contest the revote] in a fair and honest manner,” Ari told reporters on Thursday. As President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s son, Gibran’s bid benefited from an irregular change in the electoral rules that the General Elections Commission (KPU) nonetheless allowed to stand. Former Constitutional Court chief justice Anwar Usman, who is Gibran’s uncle and was involved in the October court ruling that allowed his nephew to run, was subsequently found guilty of a serious breach of ethics. Read more at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/indonesia/2024/03/22/failed-election-candidates-place-hopes-in-court-proceedings.html
