The Constitutional Court Ordered The Re-voting Of The Banjarbaru Regional Head Election With Kootong Blank

JAKARTA - The Constitutional Court ordered the KPU of Banjarbaru City, South Kalimantan, to re-vote (PSU) for the 2024 Banjarbaru Pilkada with a mechanism for selecting one candidate or empty box regional election.

That way, the PSU Banjarbaru Pilkada PSU will later contain two columns consisting of columns which include photos of candidate pair number 1 Erna Lisa Halaby and Wartono as well as empty columns that are not imaged.

"It was carried out within 60 days since this decision was pronounced," said Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court Suhartoyo reading the verdict of case Number 05/PHPU.WAKO-XXIII/2025 which was requested by the South Kalimantan Archipelago Vision Study Institute at building I MK, Jakarta, Monday, February 24 reported by ANTARA.

The Constitutional Court in this case granted part of the request of the Coordinator of the South Kalimantan Vision Study Institute, Muhamad Arifin. The Court considered that the 2024 Banjarbaru Pilkada was not in accordance with the mandate of the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia.

The 2024 Banjarbaru Pilkada was originally attended by two candidate pairs, namely candidate pair number 1 Erna-Wartono and candidate pair number 2 Aditya Mufti Ariffin and Said Abdullah.

Then, the Aditya-Said pair was disqualified, as decided by the KPU on October 31, 2024, based on Bawaslu's recommendations which stated that they had committed administrative violations.

Even though he has been disqualified, the name and image of Aditya-Said remains on the ballot on voting day 27 November 2024.

However, at the time of the vote count, the ballot voting in the Aditya-Said column was declared invalid.

Constitutional Justice Enny Nurbaningsih, when reading out the legal considerations of the Court, said that this condition caused anomalies or irregularities in the determination of valid votes.

According to the Court, the 2024 Banjarbaru City Pilkada should be an election with one candidate pair. Supposedly, in the ballot, it was given the option to vote in an empty column as a statement of disapproval of the single candidate pair.

The Court considered that last year's Banjarbaru City Pilkada was an election without contestation which caused voters to lose value and meaning. This is because voters seem to have only one choice, namely choosing candidate pair number 1.

"The general election that is implemented is actually not the implementation of the election as mandated by the constitution and cannot be justified," said Enny.

The Constitutional Court also stated that the Banjarbaru City Election was not carried out democratically and violated the principles of elections, especially fairly and freely, because there was no justice for voters and the absence of the freedom of voters to give other choices, apart from candidate pairs number 1.

The Court considered that the Banjarbaru City KPU could actually choose discretion to reprint ballots and postpone the pilkada stage until appropriate ballots are available. The discretion can be taken because the condition of one candidate pair occurs less than 29 days before the vote.

The vote acquisition for the 2024 Banjarbaru City Pilkada previously determined by the local KPU cannot be believed to be true by the Constitutional Court. According to the Court, the vote acquisition does not actually represent the wishes of all voters who have cast their votes so it must be canceled.

Therefore, the Constitutional Court canceled the Banjarbaru City KPU Decree Number 191 of 2024 concerning the Determination of the Results of the 2024 Banjarbaru Mayor and Deputy Mayor Elections dated December 4, 2024.

In order to obtain legal certainty, the Constitutional Court ordered the 2024 Banjarbaru City Pilkada to be repeated by using a ballot letter for one candidate pair, namely between candidate pair number 1 Erna-Wartono and the empty column.