‘Even in North Korea This Doesn’t Happen,’ Prabowo Has Day in Court

The Jakarta Globe, Aug 06, 2014


Jakarta. Losing presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto testified before Indonesia’s final electoral court of appeal on Wednesday, telling judges that “North Korean” levels of fraud had robbed him of the presidency.

“We are hurt by the violations and injustice carried out by the election organizer,” Prabowo told the panel of judges at the Constitutional Court in Central Jakarta.

Indonesia went to the polls on July 9 to elect a successor to Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is set to leave the State Palace after reaching the end of his two-term limit. The country’s General Election Commission (KPU) announced on July 22 that Joko Widodo had won the ballot by 53.15 percent to Prabowo’s 46.85 percent. A furious Prabowo refused to accept the result, and his camp immediately cited systemic fraud in the process, even accusing — erroneously — a small army of hackers from China and South Korea of having found a back door into the commission’s website and switching votes to Jokowi that had been intended for him.

Prabowo told the court to conduct revotes in several districts in East Java, Central Java, Papua, Bali, West Papua, North Sumatra and Jakarta. He also claimed that voters were intimidated when they wanted to cast their votes for him.

“This only happens in a totalitarian nation, even in North Korea such things do not happen,” Prabowo said. “Votes [for Jokowi] reached 100 percent [in some areas]. That’s unbelievable.”

Prabowo claimed that a thorough and fair assessment of the vote would have made him the winner with 50.25 percent of the popular ballot.

He told the court that he could produce “tens of thousands of witnesses” to substantiate his claims.

“The fate of Indonesia is in this court,” Prabowo said. “We agree to a democratic process. We will respect any decision as long as the process is honest.”

Prabowo’s lawyer Maqdir Ismail said the case was based mainly on the allegation that as many as 5 million people had voted illegally.

While Prabowo thrust into the proceedings with claims of millions of illegal voters and tens of thousands of witnesses, the court seemed more interested in ensuring that his written application to the court contained the bare minimum of evidence and was free from typos.

The judges at the Constitutional Court asked Prabowo to resubmit the legal challenge in “good Indonesian language” and asked him to provide specific evidence to substantiate each of the claims made therein. They gave him one day to fix the errors.

Justice Muhammad Alim pointed to some spelling errors, such as Indonesian words masif, which Prabowo wrote as “massif” (massive) and mengubah, which had been written as “merubah” (change).

Justice Aswanto said the case summary from Prabowo’s camp also contained too many ambiguities.

“What do you mean by pengkondisian [conditioning]?” Aswanto asked Prabowo, as quoted by Detik.com, about his claim that there was “conditioning” in the electoral process. “Please be concrete. Don’t use vague sentences. Please use sentences with a single meaning so we can understand your problem.”

Court judge Wahiduddin Adams said that Prabowo had not provided details for his argument.

“The applicant said there was a flawed vote-counting process, but he did not elaborate beyond that,” Wahiduddin said. “Every claim presented should be supported by a convincing and sufficient argument.”

To the quiet relief of the press pack, Justice Arief Hidayat said the court would not need to see tens of thousands of witnesses to reach a verdict. Twenty five witnesses would do, the court said.

“More important is the quality — the witnesses presented to the court should give high-quality testimony,” Arief said.

Chief justice Hamdan Zoelva said the court would determine the case based on evidence, and asked Prabowo to return with sufficient evidence for the justices to verify.

“The court decision will be based on proof filed to the court,” Hamdan said. “The ruling, which will be final and honest as stipulated by the Constitution, will be proper, transparent and open. All Indonesian people can see it.”

Prabowo’s lawyer Habiburokhman said the errors were merely typos, and they would be fixed immediately. Lawyer Eggi Sudjana admitted that the errors were a case of too many cooks. Around 100 lawyers have been working on the appeal.

Prabowo gave a curt response to journalists when asked about the errors in his application.

“It’s fine,” he said.

The next hearing will be on on Friday morning to hear testimony from the relevant institutions. This will include the KPU and the Election Supervisory Board (Bawaslu). The court will also hear Prabowo’s witnesses.



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