Quo Vadis General Election Dispute Handling: Between the Constitutional Court, Supreme Court or Election Court

Abstract

The existence of the Constitutional Court in a country beside the guardian of the constitution, it also serves to ensure the fulfillment of the constitutional rights of citizens. As one of state institution of reformation product, Indonesia’s Constitutional Court also given the authority to decide disputed elections, both the election at the national and local level. This type of research is socio-legal research. Data analysis used descriptive-qualitative analysis with content analysis method. The results indicate that the nature of the Constitutional Courts’ authority to rule on the dispute of Regional Head General Election is based on the constitutional mandate and also regulated in the Acts on General Election so that that authority is an attribution. The ideal concept in the handling of general election disputes locally can be found by considering the historical aspects of the handling of Regional Head General Election dispute, either still under the authority of the Supreme Court or when it has been transferred to the Constitutional Courts’ authority. This phenomenon shows that the handling of Regional Head General Election disputes often ended in controversial decisions. Therefore, we need a concept of handling carried out by the independent institute and completely exclusively handle disputes of Regional Head General Election.

Keywords: Constitutional Court, Democracy, Election Court, Election System, General Election, Supreme Court