Camelia Pasandaran

Indonesia's Constitutional Court Calls for KPU ‘Fake Letter’ Investigation

Constitutional Court chief Mahfud MD on Wednesday called on police to launch an investigation into the forgery of a court document that led to a legislative candidate wrongly being awarded a seat in the House of Representatives if the General Elections Commission (KPU) failed to do so.

“The police may initiate an investigation of the crime based on a complaint,” Mahfud said, adding the Constitutional Court itself would not file a complaint.

The incident centers on a letter purporting to be from the Constitutional Court that was faxed to the KPU on Aug. 14, saying that a seat-winning number of votes had been awarded to the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura) in South Sulawesi in the April 9 legislative elections. On Aug. 17, the court sent an original letter to the KPU via courier that stated a lower, losing number of votes, but the KPU believed the letter was identical to the fax and did not notice the difference.

The fax, which the court says is a fake, was apparently signed by court officer Zainal Arifin Hoesein. Without checking the fax’s authenticity, the KPU on Sept. 2 awarded Hanura candidate Dewi Yasin Limpo a House seat. Dewi is the sister of South Sulawesi Governor Syahrul Yasin Limpo.

On Sept. 11, the Constitutional Court sent a letter to the commission saying the fax was fake. The KPU then annulled its decision and awarded the seat to the candidate from the Great Indonesian Movement Party (Gerindra).

The KPU and the Constitutional Court have different versions of the incident, over which the mystery deepened when the court’s ruling on the dispute did not appear on its Web site on Wednesday evening. The site contains nearly all of the other rulings by the court, which was the final arbiter of election disputes.

KPU chairman Abdul Hafiz Anshary said on Tuesday that it had first awarded the seat to Dewi because the fax came from the Constitutional Court’s fax number. “It looked original with the letterhead, the signature, and it had same letter number” as the letter sent by courier on Aug. 17, he said. He declined to say who had received the fax at the KPU office.

Mahfud denied Hafiz’s claims. “We already requested a phone [list] from Telkom, and there was no fax sent to the KPU at that time.” He added that none of his staff were involved in the forgery.

He also said there were many instances of Constitutional Court decision letters being forged, but South Sulawesi is the only case receiving media attention.

Hadar Gumay, chairman of the Center for Electoral Reform, urged the p olice to investigate. “There’s a big possibility that both a KPU member and Constitutional Court member are involved in this case, and money may have also played a role,” he said. “Though the commission has already revised its decision, it’s still a criminal case and the police should investigate it.”

The incident gave more ammunition to critics of the KPU, already under fire for shoddy running of this year’s national polls.

“It means that besides questioning their competence, we can also [say] that some of them may have no integrity, by manipulating the letter,” Hadar said.

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