Give Dissenting Opinion, Saldi Isra: Re-voting Should Be Re-voting In Several Regions

The panel of judges for the 2024 presidential election dispute trial consists of eight constitutional judges. (Diah-VOI)

JAKARTA - Constitutional Court (MK) Judge Saldi Isra expressed his different opinion or dissenting opinion on the Constitutional Court's decision regarding the 2024 presidential election dispute sued by Anies Baswedan-Muhaimin Iskandar.

The rejected application was to cancel the results of the 2024 presidential election, to disqualify Prabowo Subianto-Gibran Rakabuming Raka, and to re-vote.

Although the Constitutional Court decided to reject Anies-Muhaimin's request, Saldi considered that re-voting needed to be carried out in a number of areas with problems.

"The court should have ordered re-voting in several areas as mentioned in the above legal considerations," said Saldi at the Constitutional Court building, Monday, April 22.

Saldi highlighted two problems that made him express different opinions. Namely the petitioner's argument regarding the distribution of social assistance (bansos), as well as the involvement of state officials to win one of the candidate pairs.

In this case, Saldi said that the President could argue that the acceleration of his program was in order to complete the government program whose term of office would expire.

"However, the program in question can also be used as camouflage and is used as a tool to support the pairs of candidates participating in the presidential and vice presidential elections," he explained.

Then, Saldi also found that there were problems with neutrality of regional head officials and the deployment of village heads that occurred, including in North Sumatra, Jakarra, Banten, Central Java, western sentences, and southern sulawesi.

"Considering that based on all the descriptions of the above legal considerations, the petitioner's argument as long as it relates to the politicization of social assistance and the mobilization of state officials/state officials is legally reasonable," said Saldi.

It is known, the Constitutional Court rejected Anies-Muhaimin's request. The court considered that the arguments submitted by the applicant were not based on law.

"Reject the applicant's application in its entirety," said Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court Suhartoyo when reading the verdict.

Then, the three Constitutional Court judges have different opinions on this decision. The three constitutional judges who were dissenting opinions included Saldi Isra, Enny Nurbaningsih, and Arief Hidayat.