NATIONAL Police chief Gen Listyo Sigit Prabowo said he will investigate a purported leak of a forthcoming Constitutional Court ruling that would, if authentic, transform the country’s electoral system.
Listyo’s statement came on Monday after he met with Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Mahfud MD and Indonesian Military (TNI) chief Adm. Yudo Margono.
With preparations for the 2024 elections now in full swing, several parties have reiterated their stiff opposition to the petition under review, which calls for the restoration of closed-list elections.
Listyo said if the police found any indication of a crime in relation to the leak, a formal investigation would be launched.
Mahfud meanwhile said that Constitutional Court rulings were strictly confidential until they were officially handed down.
He added that according to the court’s clerks, the information was simply an analysis of the justices’ stance from an outsider’s point of view.
Denny Indrayana, the opposition figure and former deputy law and human rights minister who released the information, has said he obtained it from an unnamed yet reliable source.
Denny, who served under president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said that the Constitutional Court would rule in favour of the plaintiff, the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), meaning the 2024 legislative elections would be held under a closed-list system, in a six-to-three decision by the court.
The PDI-P filed a petition in November demanding the reinstatement of the closed-list electoral system. In such a system, voters select not a particular candidate but a party as a whole, which then chooses its own representatives in the House of Representatives according to the proportion of the vote it won.
The court has so far held 16 hearings on the petition.
The proposed return to the closed-list system has faced massive pushback from politicians across the spectrum, who prefer the current system of direct legislative elections and who defend it as progressive and characteristic of Indonesian democracy.
Political experts say a return to closed-list elections would benefit parties with a loyal voter bases such as the PDI-P, while putting others that rely on the popularity of individual candidates at a disadvantage. — The Jakarta Post/ANN
