Indonesia’s Constitutional Court announced today that its judges had already rendered a decision on the election fraud lawsuit submitted by defeated presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto. Authorities are bracing for the possibility that the decision will be met with unrest, similarly to the protests and riots that broke out on May 21-22 in the wake of the announcement that Prabowo had officially lost the election, but one senior government official says that security forces are prepared not just for rioters but potential terrorist attacks.
Moeldoko, President Joko Widodo’s chief of staff, said today that there was a terrorist network that would try to infiltrate the demonstrations that will take place tomorrow in the area around the courthouse (police have banned any protests directly in front of the building).
“There is a terrorist network that will try (to join the demonstration), we already know that and we have already prepared,” Moeldoko told the media today as quoted by Tempo, but he did not offer any details as to which terrorist network he was referring to.
Before the May 21-22 riots, police had also warned that terrorists were planning to infiltrate and set off explosives around demonstrators in order to sow chaos and fear. After the deadly riots, police said two of the suspects they had arrested were tied to the radical Islamic Reform Movement (Garis), a group that had pledged loyalty to IS and sent almost 200 Indonesians to Syria.
For tomorrow’s announcement of the court decision, close to 50,000 police and military personnel are reportedly being deployed to the capital in anticipation of potential large scale protests and riots.
Despite discussing the potential terrorist threat, Moeldoko said that security forces were sufficient to secure the event and told the public not to worry.
National Police Chief Tito Karnavian yesterday publicly forbade any forms of protest outside Constitutional Court during the final court hearing and the police have said that no permit for large public gatherings in Central Jakarta has been issued. Despite that, pro-Prabowo protesters already started amassing around the court today and one Islamic hardline group predicted that around 100,000 will descend to the streets in support of Prabowo, though the group has been known to overestimate protester numbers before.
Most legal experts believe that Prabowo has little to no chance of winning his lawsuit, which seeks to overturn President Joko Widodo’s re-election victory with claims of massive and systemic voting fraud. In a devastating dissection of Prabowo’s case, Professor Simon Butt of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society, said the failed candidate’s legal team would need “an evidentiary miracle” to avoid losing in court, just as Prabowo lost a similar MK case in 2014 after he lost to Jokowi the first time.
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