Findings Without Remedy Indonesian Court Case Raises Questions
Indonesia’s Constitutional Court said it found no convincing evidence about Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka’s foreign school credentials, but dismissed a…
Constitutional questions over Vice President Gibran Rakabuming Raka’s eligibility reached Indonesia’s Constitutional Court nearly two years after his inauguration. In a ruling on October 6, 2026, the court said it found no convincing evidence that Gibran held a foreign diploma or certificate equivalent to senior secondary school graduation, but dismissed the petition as inadmissible and did not name the institution that should follow up its findings.
The ruling has left a central question unresolved: how should a court respond when it identifies a substantive issue but cannot grant the requested remedy through the case before it? Indonesian constitutional law lecturer Febriansyah Ramadhan describes the outcome as “findings without remedy.”
The court, known as the Indonesian Constitutional Court or Mahkamah Konstitusi (MK), said the petitioners were not a pair of candidates, the required standing for their election-results petition. It referred the matter to “the institution with the authority” under the Constitution, without identifying that institution.
Eligibility challenge dismissed on procedure
The dispute concerned Article 169(r) of Law No. 7 of 2017 on General Elections, which requires candidates to have graduated from senior secondary school or an equivalent institution. The court said it found no convincing evidence that Gibran held a foreign diploma or certificate that could be recognized as equivalent.
But the final ruling did not decide the petitioners’ request to declare Gibran’s candidacy defective, annul his inauguration or have the People’s Consultative Assembly elect a replacement vice president from two names proposed by the president under Article 8(2) of the 1945 Constitution.
“Findings without remedy” is Ramadhan’s characterization of the gap between the court’s discussion of the evidence and the action it ordered. He argues that the court should not have directly disqualified a sitting vice president, because Indonesia’s presidential system has a specific impeachment process for removing executive officials. The omission, in his view, was failing to explain how the findings could be taken forward through the constitutional system.
That distinction matters for the office and for the institutions that might be asked to act. The court’s procedural dismissal did not provide the remedy sought by the petitioners, while its referral offered no named destination or described route for implementation.
How the dispute reached the court
The eligibility challenge followed a separate controversy over Gibran’s candidacy. In 2023, the MK issued Decision No. 90/PUU-XXI/2023, creating an exception to the minimum age of 40 for presidential and vice-presidential candidates who had held or were holding an elected office. Gibran was then 36 and mayor of Surakarta, allowing him to run alongside Prabowo Subianto.
An ethics dispute arose because then-Chief Justice Anwar Usman, who participated in the case, was Gibran’s uncle. The MK Honorary Council later found Anwar had committed a serious ethics violation and removed him from the chairmanship. The age-limit ruling remained in force.
Prabowo and Gibran won the election and were inaugurated as president and vice president on October 20, 2024. The question of Gibran’s educational qualifications surfaced in 2026 after a petitioner obtained an educational equivalency letter through a public information dispute.
On September 10, 2026, twelve petitioners, including former Deputy Minister of Law and Human Rights Denny Indrayana, filed the case. They brought it as a dispute over election results after the three-day filing deadline had expired. The General Elections Commission opposed the petition on the grounds that the deadline had passed.
Ramadhan places the case within a wider dilemma over challenges to an elected official’s eligibility after an election and inauguration. He points to the United States, Pakistan and Nigeria as examples of differing approaches: courts may dismiss a case on procedural grounds, decide its substance, or determine a remedy alongside the institution responsible for carrying it out.
His assessment is that the Indonesian court had a chance to clarify the constitutional route without directly removing a sitting vice president. The ruling instead referred the matter to an unnamed institution while declaring the petition inadmissible.
Source: iconnectblog.com
