The Ganjar-Mahfud petition
In the same vein, Ganjar-Mahfud’s legal team also alleged that “structured, systematic and massive” (TSM) violations had occurred, sparked by the nepotism committed by President Jokowi, which gave rise to a coordinated abuse of power by state officials to sway voting decision in favor of Team No 2.
The petition the court was asked to consider: (1) TSM violations as a key aspect in the election result dispute, (2) nepotism and the abuse of presidential power, (3) coordinated abuse of power by top government officials, (4) the impact this has on the share of votes received by Team No 2, (5) the damage this has caused to the socio-political order in Indonesia.
As for procedural violations, MK was urged to play an active role in ensuring that general elections are held according to the noble principles set forth in the Constitution and based on due process. The major part of the content in their petition document concerns accusations that the President favored certain candidates and this bias led to his purported interference in the presidential election.
Argumentum ad Hominem
First of all, I will not attempt to examine the petition documents using various articles, rules or laws because in my opinion that is within the purview of MK justices. What I will do instead is dissect their legal arguments, using logic.
In the study of philosophy, logic is different from common sense. Logic is a method to determine and distinguish which arguments are valid and which are not. Thus, logic has various laws and guidelines that must be followed. In this article, I will employ the three laws of logic.
First, if one makes an accusation, the evidence is paramount. If I accuse someone of stealing mangoes, then I have to present an evidence, not my prejudice. How and when did they steal the mangoes? Which tree were they stolen from? Were there any discarded mango seeds?
If I accuse someone merely based on prejudices, I actually demonstrate one of the logical fallacies, called argumentum ad hominem. This occurs when we justify or blame someone because we disapprove or dislike them. In this case, just because we dislike someone, there is a tendency for us to readily assume that they are the mango thief.
This simple analogy is clearly visible in the petition documents. Both the losing pairs quickly jumped to conclusions of electoral fraud, nepotism, TSM violations and abuse of power, which ultimately led to Prabowo-Gibran’s victory. However, their petition documents predominantly contain narratives based on unfounded accusations and prejudices. There was very little evidence showing that these had actually taken place.
Pair No 2 received around 96 million votes. Logically, this means that Pairs No 1 and 3 have to prove that the large number of votes were obtained through fraudulent and manipulative means, as per their accusations. However, in their petitions neither side failed to provide strong and detailed evidence to justify their allegations.
Fallacy of Composition
Second, it is very clear that the petitioners got trapped in another logical fallacy, one known as the fallacy of composition. This happens when we introduce partial evidence, but draw a general conclusion. For example, Anton went to visit a village. There, he was welcomed by three villagers. This made him think that the village was hospitable and all the villagers were friendly. This is a logical fallacy that we encounter very often in everyday life. In fact, I believe that this is a common mistake most of us often make, born out of our natural tendency to proceed on the basis of a rule of thumb.
Now, let’s see how this fallacy is manifested, in the petition documents. Of the 99 total pages of the court filing, only six actually contain purported evidence. These included procedural violations, from manipulation of DPT, pre-marked ballot papers, vote rigging, money politics, to multiple voting.
The plaintiffs allege that there was DPT manipulation involving 52,564 Central Java voters in July 2023, evidence of pierced ballot papers at several polling stations in Brebes Regency and Lemah Duwur Village, 23,000 tampered ballot papers in Malaysia, inclusion of two pre-marked ballot papers at a polling station in Sidomulyo Timur sub-district in Pekanbaru, vote rigging in several polling stations in Kudus and Kebumen, and an unheeded call to rerun the election in 2,413 polling stations.
Even if these accusations were proven to be true, the total number of votes in question would be fewer than 1 million, insufficient to thwart Prabowo-Gibran’s win. This is clearly a fallacy on the part of Team No 1.
Now, let’s at Team No 3’s petition. Compared with that of Team No 1, I think the quality of their documents is better. They contained evidence showing mismatch in votes polled and votes counted in 62 regencies. Still, this is also a partial evidence because irregularities in 62 regencies are only about one-tenth of the total 416 regencies and 98 municipalities in Indonesia. Moreover, not all of those regencies went to Prabowo-Gibran by an overwhelming majority. So, how can they justify that TSM violations had occurred nationwide, just based on such little evidence?
The losing sides were supposed to produce undeniable evidence showing the polling stations where all the cheating took place, in order to invalidate the 96 million votes received by Prabowo-Gibran. But all they could do was to hastily draw a conclusion based on a few instances.