Regional election disputes dominated the cases handled by the Constitutional Court in 2010, with 74 percent of elections resulting in some sort of controversy, a court official said.

Muhidin, who heads the case administration department of the Constitutional Court, said that a total of 230 cases submitted to the court, also known as the MK, were related to electoral disputes, mostly in the regions.

Another 120 cases concerned reviews of laws while two other cases pertained to disputes between state institutions over overlapping authority. "From the 230 cases, a total of 215 have been decided, six are still being studied and nine are awaiting a verdict," Muhidin said.

The MK, he said, ruled to accept 23 of the electoral dispute cases for consideration, while 145 were rejected without being heard and 43 others were deemed unworthy of being heard. The fate of the remainder is unknown.

Of the legal reviews, 39 carried over from the previous year and 81 were registered this year.

Only 16 review cases resulted in decisions favoring the plaintiffs, Muhidin said. Four of the reviews were also withdrawn by the plaintiffs.

The two disputes over overlapping authorities of state institutions were still being heard, Muhidin said.

He said 74 percent of the 227 regional elections, held at provincial, district or municipal levels, generated disputes that were reported to the MK. "There have only been 58 regional elections in which no dispute was reported to the MK," he said.

Muhidin explained that more than one plaintiff could file a complaint in one election, and many of the elections had to proceed in two rounds. So although there were only 168 elections resulting in disputes, the number of plaintiffs bringing cases to the court was 260.

Muhidin said key electoral disputes handled by the court this year included the one in the Waringin Barat municipality of Central Kalimantan, another in Sumatra's South Bengkulu district and a third in the Papuan capital of Jayapura.

In the Waringin Barat case, the MK verdict disqualified Eko Soemarno and Sugianto, a pair of candidates for district chief and deputy, because they were proved to have deliberately engaged in money politics, intimidation and terror to win office.

The July verdict officially installed second-place candidates Ujang Iskandar and Bambang Purwanto as district head and deputy, but that the verdict has yet to be implemented.

In the South Bengkulu case, the MK disqualified district chief candidate Dirwan Mahmud because it was shown he had spent time in jail.

In the Jayapura case, the court changed the legal standing of a candidate scrapped from the list by the local election committee.

MK chairman Mahfud M.D. said that many of the electoral disputes had resulted in the defamation or slander of MK judges.

"Electoral disputes have seen judges of the court accused of taking bribes," Mahfud said at a meeting with House of Representatives's Commission III, for law and legislation, at the court in early December.

He was referring to the accusation by legal expert Refly Harun, who has alleged that MK Judge Akil Mochtar accepted a bribe from J.R. Saragih, the head of the Simalungung district in North Sumatra.

Mahfud said he would be happy to relinquish the authority to settle electoral disputes to other court institutions, as it had only brought problems for the MK.

"But if we are still trusted to handle them, then they should be handled in accordance with the procedures at the MK," he said. Home Affairs Minister Fauzi Gamawan said this year that electoral disputes should be taken over by another court as they took up too much of the Constitutional Court's time.

Gamawan proposed that those disputes be settled in the regions by appeals courts.

He also said that if the MK continued to judge electoral disputes, it should do so in the regions where they occurred, in order to keep them from clogging the central court in Jakarta.

Gamawan pointed out that before the days of the Constitutional Court, electoral disputes were settled in the regions at the local appellate courts while provincial election disputes were heard by the Supreme Court.

But Saldi Isra, a noted expert in state law, said Gamawan's proposal would only cause tension in the regions because those involved in the dispute would be present to sway the decision.

Hearing the cases in the capital would prevent supporters of those involved from causing open conflict, he said.

Muhidin said that of all the demands for legal reviews, the Law on Regional Government was the most disputed.

The 2004 Law on Regional Government has been the subject of 24 reviews while the 2008 law revising the 2004 law became the subject of 11 reviews.