Researcher from the Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem), Ihsan Maulana, asked the Constitutional Court (MK) to pay attention to the potential for buying and selling votes between parties in disputes over legislative election results (PHPU Pileg 2024). Moreover, there are parties that have almost reached the parliamentary threshold of 4% and parties that are far from the parliamentary threshold, such as the United Development Party (PPP) and the Indonesian Republican Guard Party (Garuda).
Ihsan assessed that parties whose vote acquisition was far from the parliamentary threshold and had incurred high costs during the election would not hesitate to sell their votes during the vote recapitulation process. Meanwhile, in the 2024 PHPU legislative elections, all PPP cases argue for inflating and reducing votes for the Garuda Party. Meanwhile, if we refer to KPU decision Number 360/2024, the PPP received 5,878,777 votes, or 3.87%, and the Garuda Party received 406,883 votes, or 0.27%.
“Don’t let there be a transactional process carried out between the applicant and the parties concerned, which then seems to become a legal fact which the Constitutional Court then approves and that affects the results of the PPP,” Ihsan said in a discussion entitled “‘Launching of Results of Monitoring Disputes on Legislative Election Results at the Constitutional Court” in Cikini, Central Jakarta (20/5).
Based on Tulisdem’s records, there were 106 cases that argued for inflating and subtracting votes. Meanwhile, 95 cases only argued for vote inflation. Meanwhile, the third most common argument is vote reduction, with 77 cases.
Ihsan advised the Constitutional Court to follow up on PPP cases until the evidentiary process stage. According to him, the PPP case with parties related to Garuda is not enough to just go through the examination process; it requires an evidentiary examination stage, which will be carried out by the Constitutional Court in the next two weeks. []