News Desk, Jakarta – Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Mahfud MD has urged the General Elections Commission (KPU) to challenge the Central Jakarta District Court verdict that ordered a halt in the electoral preparation leading to the 2024 general election.
Mahfud said that the verdict, issued on Thursday in favor of a small political party and ordered the repeat of all electoral processes from the start, was controversial and beyond the authority of a district court to decide.
"We have to fight this verdict. This should be easy but we also have to take into consideration some of the controversy and noise that it could cause," Mahfud said in a statement posted from his Instagram account @mohmahfudmd on Friday.
Mahfud, who is also a legal scholar and former chief judge of the Constitutional Court, said that the KPU would likely win its legal challenge against the court verdict.
He said that a district court had no authority to handle an election dispute and that it should instead go to the Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu).
"The district court is not competent to deal with this election dispute," he said.
In response to a lawsuit filed by the leadership of minor political party the Prima Party, which challenged the KPU decision to disqualify the party from contesting the 2024 general election, the Central Jakarta District ruled that the election agency must halt the ongoing process leading up to the February 2024 balloting.
The court also ordered the KPU to restart the whole election process from the beginning in the next 28 months.