Camelia Pasandaran – Four parties who lost House seats due to a recent Supreme Court decision are asking the General Election Commission to reject the ruling.
The Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), National Mandate Party (PAN), United Development Party (PPP) and People's Conscience Party (Hanura) all found their numbers at the House reduced when the Supreme Court on June 18 reinstated a seat-apportioning system that had been tossed out last year by the Constitutional Court.
PPP deputy secretary general M. Romahurmuziy said the court's ruling violated the country's proportional voting system. "With this ruling, there will be a discrepancy between the total votes and the total House seats gained by political parties," he argued.
The ruling handed more seats to the nation's biggest parties: the Democratic Party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), and Golkar, at the expense of smaller ones.
Patrialis Akbar of PAN questioned whether the court was showing favoritism toward the biggest winner in the legislative elections, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party.
"The court rejected [a request for a] judicial review by Hasto Kristianto of the PDI-P on the same case," he said. "But when the case was filed by Zainal Ma'arif of the Democratic Party, the court agreed to it. That shows inconsistency."
Andi Nurpati, a member of General Election Commission (KPU), said on Monday that the commission had not yet decided how to proceed.
"We're still consulting several law experts," she said. "What we need to find out from them is whether a ruling issued after we announce the legislative seat distribution can have an impact on our decision. We have to be careful as the decision has political implications," she added.
The Constitutional Court ruling threw out a sytem that guaranteed legislative candidates a seat in the House if they garnered 30 percent of the 'vote division number.' This was calculated by dividing the total votes by the number of seats in an electoral region. If candidates failed to get 30 percent, the seats would be given to the top-ranked candidates on a party's candidates list. The Constitutional Court replaced that system with a majority vote system.
Irman Putra Sidin, an administrative law expert who formerly worked at the Constitutional Court, said the KPU should not ignore the court's decision.
"No matter how bad a court ruling is, it should be applied," Irman said. "Ignoring the court decision will make the legal system unclear.
"Later, after KPU has issued its decision on a new seat distribution based on the court ruling, political parties can contest the result at the Constitutional Court," he said. "That is the right system."