Yesterday’s session of the Constitutional Court hearing on the election fraud lawsuit filed by Prabowo Subianto’s campaign appeared to go quite badly for the failed presidential candidate’s legal team. There were several embarrassing moments involving his lawyers during the marathon session that lasted until 5am (!) including judges having to delay the hearing so that Prabowo’s team could correctly label their evidence and the team’s lead lawyer being told to be quiet or be thrown out of court after he interrupted one of the judges’ questions.
We could go on, but there’s one particularly egregious legal folly we’d like to highlight from yesterday’s hearing involving a witness for Prabowo’s team whose very presence in the Jakarta courtroom appears to have been in violation of the law.
Rahmadsyah Sitompul, the head of the joint secretariat for Prabowo’s campaign in Batubara, North Sumatra, was called as a witness last night and told the court he had evidence that police in his region had pushed the public to vote for President Joko Widodo before the April 17 election. The validity of that evidence was quickly called into question when one of the judges asked him if he already reported this alleged violation of the election law to authorities before — Rahmadsyah admitted he had not.
But what really caused the court to question Rahmadsyah’s credibility was his odd demeanor and quiet speech, which led a judge to ask him if he was afraid of testifying because somebody had threatened him.
“No, your honor. I am afraid because I am currently a defendant. I am subject to the ITE Law,” he replied, referring to Indonesia’s Law on Electronic Transactions and Information.
Rahmadsyah was named a suspect for spreading misinformation in relation to a post he made on Facebook on June 30 of last year in which he claimed that the Batubara police had helped a local legislative candidate pair win the election with manipulated vote count forms. The evidence he used to back up his claim was judged to be falsified and he was named a suspect for violating the ITE law.
Rahmadsyah had been ordered to stay within Batubara while his case was ongoing, which he admitted to the judge, but said he had notified the prosecutor that he would be coming to Jakarta.
When the judge asked whether he had informed the prosecutor that he would be testifying at the Constitutional Court, Rahmadsyah confessed that he had not. Instead, he had told authorities that he was coming to Jakarta to accompany his mother while she got medical treatment, which he insisted was also a real reason he needed to come to the capital.
There is no word yet on whether Rahmadsyah will face legal sanctions for leaving Batubara, but one thing seems clear — Prabowo’s legal team had no idea that their witness was technically there in violation of the law.
Bambang Widjojanto, the head of Prabowo’s legal team, acknowledged that he had only learned about Rahmadsyah’s suspect status in the courtroom, but said that his testimony should be appreciated nonetheless.
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 Constitutional Court case in 2014 after he lost to Jokowi the first time.
The Constitutional Court hearings continue today and the judges are expected to render a decision next week on June 28.
