KPU to wait until deadline to implement court ruling

JAKARTA LIFE'S STYLE. As the General Elections Commission (KPU) struggles to deal with the Supreme Court ruling that would change the makeup of legislatures across the country, a KPU member has hinted the commission will dismiss the ruling.

I Gusti Putu Artha, a KPU member, said here Thursday the commission might wait until the deadline to allow the official inauguration of politicians it had declared House of Representatives and regional legislative members based on its decree on legislative seat allocation, before implementing the court verdict that annulled the decree.

“The court ruling does not seem to be retroactive, which means all of our regulatory seat allocation procedures are still valid [until the deadline],” Putu Artha said Thursday at the KPU office in Jakarta, referring to Supreme Court regulation No. 1/2004, in which the Supreme Court judicial review verdict on state institution regulations automatically annulled the respective regulation after 90 days.

In this case, if House members do get inaugurated as scheduled by Oct. 1, the Supreme Court verdict would not affect party seat allocation, should the 90-day deadline fall after Oct. 1. The ruling was delivered on June 18.

“From a jurisdictional point of view [our regulation] still applies, so if we inaugurate House members based on our regulation, they lawfully become the new House members,” he stated, after a meeting on the verdict between the KPU and the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Harifin Tumpa confirmed KPU members had met him to discuss the verdict, saying that the court had explained the contents of the verdict to the commission.

“If the KPU does not implement the decision, then the [KPU] rule becomes obsolete within 90 days,” he said. “That is, 90 days from when the KPU received the verdict”.

However, in a separate interview, KPU chief Abdul Hafiz Anshary denied the KPU planned to wait the verdict out, saying that any statement made on the KPU’s position on the Supreme Court’s verdict must be interpreted as a personal statement.

“The KPU has yet to decide its position on the verdict. Whoever said the KPU had this plan or that plan is speaking on his or her own behalf and not the KPU's,” he told reporters.

The Supreme Court decided on June 18 to annul the KPU’s second-phase counting of votes from April's legislative elections. Under the now-annulled KPU regulation, the second phase involved the allocation of seats to parties in which the parties who had gained seats during the first phase may not use the votes they used in the first phase.

However, the Supreme Court ruled that the votes used by the winning parties in the first phase must be used again in the second phase, costing smaller parties with fewer votes legislative seats, after the KPU had already finished allocating seats to representatives of these minor parties, such as Prabowo's Greater Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) and the National Mandate Party (PAN).

At least 66 seats would be given to the major parties at the expense of the minor parties, according to a count by CETRO, an NGO focusing on electoral issues, with an estimated 1,300 regional legislative council seats to shift as well.