Prabowo Camp Prepares 1,000 Witnesses for Election Dispute Hearing

The Jakarta Globe, Aug 07, 2014


Jakarta. A legal expert from the camp of defeated presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto and his running mate Hatta Rajasa said the team has prepared a total of 1,000 witnesses ready to testify in the upcoming hearing at the Constitutional Court, where the pair has filed a lawsuit challenging the presidential election results announced by the General Election Commission (KPU).

“I’ve selected the witnesses, [such as] those who saw money politics, those who witnessed the burning [of one of Prabowo's campaign posts] and those who were assigned in the polling stations,” Elza Syarief said.

According to the lawyer, Prabowo’s camp had thousands of people ready to testify on election violations by president-elect Joko Widodo’s team, but that only 1,000 have been selected and registered.

“We have thousands of witnesses, but we have selected 1,000 of them to attend the hearing at the Constitutional Court,” Elza said.

The Constitutional Court has limited the total number of witnesses to attend Friday’s hearing to only 25 people, and while having no issue with the policy, Elza called on the Constitutional Court not to implement the limit until it fully understood the claims laid out in the lawsuit.

“If the Constitutional Court is still unsure of what we are reporting, then it shouldn’t limit [the number of] our witnesses,” she said.

The court held its first hearing of the case on Wednesday and is slated to resume the trial on Friday, after giving Prabowo and Hatta a day to clarify the claims in their lawsuit.

Chief Justice Hamdan Zoelva said on Wednesday that many improvements were needed in the lawsuit, citing discrepancies between arguments presented in the 146-page document and demands of the plaintiff to the court.


(Obviously a case of extremely sour grapes, just imagine if pak Prabowo would have won the Presidency...., perhaps a bit like that Roman Emperor Nero who burned down Rome.., would the generalisimo have tried to burn down Indonesia if he did not get it all his way? And Malaysia would be complaining about the excessive smog  )


siK


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