Erwida Maulia, Jakarta – The door has now been firmly closed shut by the Constitutional Court on candidates for the presidential elections who have no backing either from major political parties or from strong party coalitions.
After rejecting participation by possible independent candidates' for the presidential race through a court verdict issued on Tuesday, the Constitutional Court subsequently handed over a decision in the same spirit on Wednesday ruling on the minimum vote threshold that parties or coalitions of parties would have to secure in order to be able to name presidential candidates.
The ruling is stipulated in Article 9 of Law No. 42/2008 on presidential elections, which says: "Presidential and vice presidential candidate pairs are proposed by political parties or party coalitions contesting in elections that meet the requirement of gaining at least 20 percent of seats in the House of Representatives or 25 percent of the valid votes cast in legislative elections prior to the presidential elections."
Constitutional Court chief Mahfud MD said the article was not in conflict with the 1945 Constitution. "The plaintiffs' arguments are baseless," Mahfud said.
Among the plaintiffs were independent presidential hopeful Maj. Gen. (ret) Saurip Kadi, the Star Crescent Party (PBB), the People's Conscience Party, the Reform Democracy Party and the Labor Party.
The plaintiffs said Article 9 of the presidential elections law was "highly discriminatory", "unfair", and would "kill" many people's chances of running for the presidency. They said the article violated the Constitution as the latter did not provide any details over how many votes parties should have to gain in order to be able to name candidates.
"Article 9 shows the arrogance of the big parties winning the 2004 legislative elections. It doesn't provide opportunities for democratic changes in socio-political leadership nor does it offers alternatives for more varied candidate pairs," the plaintiffs said.
Government representatives said, however, that the threshold requirement was necessary so as to ensure the elected President and Vice President would have strong support from the people and the House.
The court ruled the requirement was a derived legal conclusion from the Constitution and not necessarily against it. It also rejected the argument that the threshold would lead to undemocratic elections, saying the parties eligible to name candidates would be those elected democratically by the people.
The court also handed down a verdict in the same hearing on the request of the Star Crescent Party for a judicial review of Article 3 (5) of the 2008 Law on legislative elections, maintaining that its rulings over different schedules for presidential and legislative elections were in line with the Constitution.
Three out of eight judges – Abdul Mukhtie Fadjar, Maruarar Siahaan and M. Akil Mochtar – voiced dissenting opinions. They said strong party support did not necessarily mean bigger votes for presidential and vice presidential candidates.
They cited the case of the 2004 presidential elections in which the incumbent president, backed by his Democratic Party, won over candidates backed by bigger parties like Megawati Soekarnoputri (backed by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle) and Wiranto (backed by the Golkar Party).