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The MK Has Eliminated The Presidential Threshold, With Anwar Usman And One Judge Expressing A Dissenting Opinion

The Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court, Anwar Usman, along with Daniel Yusmic Foekh, expressed differing opinions, known as dissenting opinions, in the ruling of Constitutional Court case number 62/PUU-XXII/2024. This ruling abolished the presidential threshold, a regulation previously established in the Election Law concerning the nomination of presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Anwar and Daniel contended that the petitioners, four students from the Faculty of Sharia and Law at Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University, lacked legal standing in their application. "We believe that the Court should declare the Petitioners as lacking legal standing, and therefore their application should be dismissed," Anwar and Daniel stated, as cited from the ruling document on Thursday, January 2, 2025. 

They argued that the petitioners did not possess legal standing due to their status as students. In contrast, 36 lawsuits regarding the presidential threshold that were rejected by the Court originated from petitioners who had legal standing as political parties or citizens eligible to run for the presidency. Anwar and Daniel further asserted that the four petitioners needed to demonstrate the constitutional harm they experienced by filing a judicial review of the presidential threshold provisions. "To determine and assess whether the parties in the legal review application possess legal standing as Petitioners, they must be able to articulate the qualifications and constitutional harm they have suffered due to the enactment of a law," they wrote. 

Anwar and Daniel referenced several rulings that underscore the requirements for the legal standing of petitioners, including rulings 74/2020, 66/2021, 52/2022, and 80/2023. "The limitation on who may file a request for the judicial review of Article 222 of Law 7/2017 does not imply that the norm in question is immune to examination, but rather reflects the absence of constitutional harm experienced by individual citizens of Indonesia, in this case, the petitioners," they added. 

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Tag: Anwar Usman Election Law