Camelia Pasandaran – As the campaign teams of losing presidential candidates Jusuf Kalla and Megawati Sukarnoputri began presenting their complaints to the Constitutional Court on Tuesday, it was clear where their common cause ended.
They agreed in claiming that millions of fictitious votes had made the election a sham. They agreed that there must now be a second round of voting. But on which of the candidates should be in that second round, their unity abruptly dissolved.
A representative of Kalla's team, Chairuman Harahap, said Kalla and running mate Wiranto lost 24 million votes as a result of a decision by the General Elections Commission (KPU) to scrap 69,000 polling stations. At least 500 voters were supposed to cast their votes at each of the stations, and the Kalla camp claimed at least 70 percent of those disenfranchised voters would have voted for the vice president.
Chairuman said the final results would have been roughly 48 million votes for Yudhoyono (40 percent), 39.2 million for Kalla (32.5 percent) and 32.5 million for Megawati (27.4 percent).
In the KPU's official election results, Kalla came in a distant third with 16 percent.
"Under the true conditions, the election should go to a second round with Yudhoyono and Kalla running again," Chairuman said.
Megawati's team had other ideas, telling the court that 28.6 million fictitious votes went to Yudhoyono and most of these should be stripped from his total.
Arteria Dahlan, a lawyer for the Megawati team, said his calculations showed that Yudhoyono won 48.7 percent, Megawati was second with 35.06 percent and Kalla third with 16.2 percent.
"The true data show that Yudhoyono did not win in one election round," Arteria said, demanding the court annul the results and order an election rerun in 25 provinces that he said had inaccurate final voters lists.
Kalla was absent at the proceedings but a teary-eyed Megawati was at the court as it began hearing both team's challenges against the validity of the results, including a complaint that the KPU failed to ensure a free and fair poll.
Fighting back tears, the former president said before the hearing: "I expect the judges to be fair. I was the one who proposed establishing the Constitutional Court."
Chairuman said the KPU also violated the Election Law by twice revising the final voters list that it released ahead of the poll.
The Kalla and Megawati camps had also made other claims against the validity of the voter rolls, including allegations that there were millions of fictitious or duplicate names on the final voters list while tens of millions of eligible voters were left off.
On July 23, the KPU declared Yudhoyono the runaway winner with 73,874,562 votes, or 60.8 percent of the vote. Megawati came in second with 32,548,105 votes, or 26.8 percent, and Kalla third with 15,081,814 votes, or 12.4 percent.
The Election Law requires a candidate to win 50 percent plus one vote to win outright and avoid a runoff against the runner-up. Both the Kalla and Megawati teams said their goal in disputing the results was to force a second round and hopefully win there.
Both camps say they will introduce evidence when the court hearing resumes today. But analysts have accused the pair of being bad losers and trying to taint Yudhoyono's win by claiming the election results were fraudulent.
There is a general consensus that Kalla and Megawati's legal moves have little chance of overturning Yudhoyono's victory. "The data presented by the candidates will not reduce the votes gained by the current winner to below 50 percent," said Andrinof Chaniago, a political analyst from the University of Indonesia. "I doubt whether the teams of both candidates have sufficient data to request an election rerun."
Ruhut Sitompul, an official from Yudhoyono's Democratic Party, said the two losing tickets needed to present real evidence. "There is no law or regulation that may open the possibility of an election rerun," Ruhut said. "We should respect the election result announced by the KPU."
Andi Nurpati, a member of the KPU, said the evidence being touted by the losing candidates' teams was not valid. "They're only records of the parties and not official data," she said. "We have prepared the official election data".