Prabowo camp to perform umroh if they win lawsuit

JAKARTA. The legal team of the Prabowo Subianto-Hatta Rajasa losing presidential ticket plans to go on the umroh (minor haj pilgrimage) to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, should the Constitutional Court (MK) overturn the results of the 2014 presidential election.

Prabowo legal team member Habiburokhman said on Tuesday that the team would celebrate if the court's panel of justices decided to annul the official vote tally results by the General Elections Commission (KPU), which declared Prabowo’s rival, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, the winner with a margin of more than 8 million votes.

“We plan to go on the umroh,” he said.

Habiburokhman went to say that if the panel of justices ruled that the election was tainted by fraud and there should be a revote, the Prabowo legal team would work extra hard to win.

“This is because we need to catch up by at least 5 million votes [for Prabowo to win the election],” he said.

When asked what the team would do should the court reject its demand, Habiburokhman said he did not want to comment on “what ifs”.

“We’re optimistic [we will win]. Our authentication is perfect, particularly because facts we have presented to the court came from our opponent’s side,” he said, referring to witnesses from the KPU that substantiated the Prabowo camp’s arguments.

The court will make a ruling on Thursday. Currently, the court is verifying evidence submitted by both Prabowo’s legal team and the KPU.

On Tuesday, Prabowo’s advocate team submitted more than 5,000 pages of documents to the court. He said the documents were not new evidence but contained conclusions drawn from hearings at the court to date.

“The conclusions are especially related to the case of the DPKTb [additional special voters list],” Habiburokhman said. (Hans Nicholas Jong)