An activist flies an Indonesian flag in front of amural critical of the government in Jakarta on Monday
Shaken by uncertainty following separate court verdicts and the threat of legal action, the General Elections Commission will delay today’s scheduled announcement of members of the next House of Representatives. Syamsul Bahri, a member of the commission, also known as the KPU, said they decided to delay the announcement until Friday at the earliest to study separate Constitutional Court and Supreme Court rulings on the allocation of House seats won in the April 9 legislative elections. He said the KPU also needed time to prepare for an expected lawsuit by a losing Democratic Party candidate. “We will only declare the new president and vice president [tomorrow],” Syamsul said on Monday. The situation in the legislature is far from simple. In June, the Supreme Court made a ruling on the method of allocating seats that called for 66 House posts to be taken away from smaller parties and given to larger ones, including the Democratic Party and Golkar. It also called for about 1,300 provincial legislative seats to be redistributed. That ruling was in response to a request from a Democratic Party candidate, Zaenal Ma’arif, for a judicial review of the KPU’s regulation on second-stage seat allocation. The Democratic Party stood to gain another 30 seats from the decision. But earlier this month, the KPU said it would not retroactively apply the ruling to this year’s elections, but would only apply it for the next national elections in 2014. Then, on Aug. 7, the Constitutional Court appeared to agree with the KPU’s position when it ruled in favor of four smaller political parties that had requested it review the Supreme Court ruling. Now, Syamsul has acknowledged, the KPU has been given pause again thanks to a new threat made by Democratic Party lawyer Utomo A. Karim in the wake of the Constitutional Court’s ruling. He has warned he may file a lawsuit against the KPU on behalf of 115 candidates from various parties if it doesn’t immediately implement the Supreme Court ruling. Syamsul said the KPU would now attempt to implement both courts’ rulings, despite their contradictory interpretations. “We’ll find a way,” he said. But Irman Putra Sidin, an administrative law expert, said that if the KPU attempted to implement both rulings, it could cause chaos within the legal system. “If there’s an ongoing lawsuit, [judicial] review, complaint ... to a court, we’ll never come to a conclusion over the election results,” he said. Irman said the KPU should have just implemented the Constitutional Court ruling, which is based on the Constitution and has precedence over a Supreme Court ruling based on law. Refly Harun, an administrative law expert at the Center for Electoral Reform (Cetro), agreed. “If there is a candidate or party that wants to sue the KPU, let them do it. It won’t really influence the final ruling of the Constitutional Court.” Jeirry Sumampow, of the Indonesian Voters Committee (Tepi), said any delay in announcing the new House members would show the KPU was susceptible to political influence. “There are so many interests in the election results, and the KPU should not be in that game,” Jeirry said. “Each KPU member has different interests and opinions on the results.”
