Indonesian leader supports appeal against a court ruling calling for the election to be postponed

JAKARTA: Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo said Monday he supports the country’s electoral commission to appeal a controversial court ruling calling for the 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections to be postponed.

His comments come after a district court in Jakarta last week ordered the national electoral body (KPU) to halt all election preparations over a procedural complaint by an obscure party.

The court’s decision reignited debate in the world’s third-largest democracy over extending the presidential term, which the constitution limits to two five-year terms. Some senior politicians have backed the idea, while others have warned that twenty years of democratic reforms introduced after decades of authoritarian rule could be reversed.

Jokowi, as the president is commonly known, said Monday the government hopes election preparations will go ahead as planned.

“This is a controversy that has produced pros and cons, but the government supports the KPU to appeal,” he told reporters in a video uploaded by the presidential secretariat.

He has previously said he opposes the idea of ​​extending his term. The Constitutional Court also declared in a separate case last week that there could be no extension.

The electoral commission has said it will move forward with organizing the elections, and chairman Hasyim Asy’ari told Reuters on Monday it would seek “a legal next step” in a higher court.

The Central Jakarta District Court’s decision drew criticism from legal experts who say the judges acted outside their jurisdiction.

A copy of the ruling, seen by Reuters last week, showed the judges concluded that the complainant, the Prima party, was wrongly denied the opportunity to file documents needed to contest the elections , partly due to glitches in the KPU software.

Several polls show that most Indonesians are against extending Jokowi’s term.