Court Battle Will Be Intense: Prabowo-Gibran's Victory Deemed Fragile

The Constitutional Court commenced the hearing on the dispute surrounding the 2024 presidential election on Wednesday, Mar. 27, with an introductory examination on the agenda. Legal teams representing both Anies Baswedan-Muhaimin Iskandar and Ganjar Pranowo-Mahfud MD have presented their petitions, rejecting the election outcome that declared Prabowo Subianto-Gibran Rakabuming as the winners. Both sides focused not only on the manipulation of votes during and after polling but also on pre-poll conditioning, primarily through the alleged abuse of power by President Joko Widodo.

Bambang Widjojanto, a member of Anies-Muhaimin's legal team, asserted that the vote count for 02 (Prabowo-Gibran) was obtained through methods that violated the principles of free, fair, and honest elections. "Starting from the involvement of the presidency office, the support of President Joko Widodo, the incapacitation of the independence of election organizers, manipulation of candidate nomination requirements, mobilization of state apparatus, and misuse of state funds," he said during the trial at the Constitutional Court in Jakarta on Mar. 27.

Ganjar-Mahfud's legal team emphasized that the abuse of power was the primary violation in the 2024 presidential election. "The 2024 election is rife with violations and nepotism; the ineffectiveness of election organizers is evident from their lack of independence. Even the overly formalistic approach of the Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) towards various violations that occurred in the field. The Constitutional Court, designed to protect the constitution, must not be trapped as a Calculating Court," said the Deputy Legal Team for Ganjar-Mahfud's National Winning Team, Annisa Ismail.

Earlier, Ganjar-Mahfud's Legal Deputy, Henry Yosodiningrat, stated that they were focused on proving that the presidential election's fraud was structured, systematic, and massive. They are not concerned with the vote difference but are focused on irregularities such as intimidation not to vote in Madura, East Java, and Sragen, Central Java. This includes incidents during the re-voting in Malaysia. "We have evidence for everything, and there will be Regional Police Chiefs that we will submit," Henry said.

In response, the Head of Prabowo-Gibran's Legal Team, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, assessed that the dispute petitions from the Anies-Muhaimin and Ganjar-Mahfud camps did not present evidence. "There are many narratives, assumptions, hypotheses, rather than presenting evidence. Narratives are not evidence," he said after the hearing. The team also sticks to the view that structured, systematic, and massive violations are handled by Bawaslu, not the Constitutional Court.