The Constitutional Court Rejects The Lawsuit For Restrictions On The Term Of Office Of The Head Of Political Parties

Screenshot - Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court (MK) Anwar Usman read out the verdict

JAKARTA - The Constitutional Court (MK) rejected the lawsuit for testing Law Number 2 of 2011 concerning Political Parties (UU Parpol) regarding the term of office of the general chairman of political parties (parpol) which was limited to ten years or two terms.

"The verdict: adjudicating, stating that the petitioners' petition is unacceptable," said Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court Anwar Usman when reading the verdict at the Constitutional Court building as reported by ANTARA, Monday, July 31.

The lawsuit with the main case Number 69/PUU-XXI/2023 was filed by a resident of North Nias named Eliadi Hulu, a resident of Yogyakarta Saiful Salim, Andreas Laurencius who claimed to be the administrator of the Golkar Party DPP, and Daniel Heri Pasaribu as a member of the NasDem Party.

In its petitum, as stated in a copy of the Constitutional Court's decision which was downloaded from the webmkri.id page, Monday, the Petitioners requested that the Court declare Article 23 paragraph (1) of Law 2/2011 contrary to the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia.

The Petitioners ask that the replacement of the management of political parties at each level be carried out according to the AD and ART. Especially for general chairman, AD and ART must regulate a five-year term and can only be extended once in the same position.

In the trial of reading the verdict, the Court concluded that the applicants did not have legal standing to apply for the a quo and the rest of the petition was not considered further.

Constitutional Justice Guntur Hamzah said Eliadi and Saiful as Petitioners I and Petitioners II were individual Indonesian citizens, but were not members of the political party organization.

On that basis, the Court considered that Eliadi and Saiful did not have qualifications related to the assumption that the potential loss of constitutional rights arose with the enactment of the articles being sued.

"In fact, if the applicant I and Petitioner II's qualifications are found concrete steps to become members of political parties, quod non, this is not enough to also illustrate the fullness of the qualification requirements," said Guntur.

Meanwhile, Andreas as Petition III was unable to show a member card (KTA) of the Golkar Party. The court only found evidence in the form of a photocopy of the Golkar Party's DPP Decree on the Ratification of Compositions and Personalities of the Golkar Party's DPP Disaster Management Agency for the 2019-2024 Bakti Period.

The decree, said the judge, was not enough to prove that Andreas was a member or administrator of the Golkar Party. Thus, the Court did not get the belief that Andreas was a member or administrator of a political party.

"Moreover, the name listed in the decree is different from the name listed by the Petitioner in the application for quo and the Petitioner ID card III," added Guntur.

Daniel as Petitioner IV meets the qualifications as a member of the political party as evidenced by the ownership of the NasDem Party KTA. However, he could not include evidence as a NasDem Party administrator.

In addition, said Guntur, Daniel has never used his rights to channel his aspirations to his political parties, regarding the desire to limit the periodization and term of office of the head of the political party during the national deliberation.

"Considering that based on all the descriptions above, it turns out that Petitioner I, Petitioner II, Petitioner III, and Petitioner IV (hereafter, the Petitioners) do not have the legal standing to apply for the quo," said Guntur.

On the other hand, the Chief Justice of the Panel of Judges said that one Constitutional Justice, Arief Hidayat, had different reasons (concurring opinions).

In general, Arief agrees with the majority of judges who state that the Petitioners do not have a legal standing in submitting the quo application. However, if the Petitioners have legal standings, the sovereignty of a political party is in the hands of the political party itself.

"If the Petitioners had a legal standing position, a non-quod, the point of application was not legally justified, so norma quo remained constitutional," said the presiding judge reading out Arief's different reasons.