The Constitutional Court has predicted that the number of election disputes in the 2014 general election will tend to decline compared to the previous election.
“We expect a reduction because the number of political parties contesting this year’s election is lower than in the 2009 election, in which 36 political parties took part,” said court chairman Hamdan Zoelva in Yogyakarta on Saturday, as quoted by Antara news agency.
The decline would also be due to, among others things, the better preparations by the General Elections Commission (KPU) ahead of this election, he said.
Hamdan explained that there had been a commitment by the KPU not to delay resolving any election disputes. “The election disputes handled by the Constitutional Court are actually residual problems that have not yet been resolved by the election organizer [the KPU],” he said.
In the 2009 election, the court reportedly received 64 electoral dispute reports covering more than 500 cases that were submitted by 32 of the 36 political parties and the Regional Representative Councils (DPD).
Hamdan said the court had started preparing mechanisms, involving the court’s staff members, aimed at resolving problems that might lead to election disputes.
“I have prepared a task force involving more than 100 court staff members, comprising clerks, researchers and other officials, to back up the settlement of election disputes at the court,” he said.
Moreover, Hamdan said, the court would also introduce procedures for convening at the court to political parties and other election-related stakeholders such as the KPU and the Election Supervisory Committee (Bawaslu).
“Thus, they will hopefully understand what they should do when they convene at the Constitutional Court so the process can run smoother,” he said.
