Indonesia’s Constitutional Court Challenges shot down Prabowo SubiantoHowever, Trump’s victory in the country’s presidential election did not ban his election rivals from ever running for president again, contrary to claims made in an edited video that has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on social media. Live footage of the Constitutional Court’s decision shows that the judges did not ban Prabowo’s rivals, and the court’s written decisions also make no mention of an alleged ban.
“Ganjar Pranowo and Anies Baswedan are barred from running for president in Indonesia by the Constitutional Court again and again” read the Indonesian text in a TikTok video shared on April 23, 2024
The video that has more than 450,000 viewscombines clips of the presidential candidates and their running mates reacting to a court ruling.
One of the court’s judges appears to be saying that the candidates – referring to their candidate numbers – “are not allowed to participate in the Indonesian presidential election.” again and again“.
The video has also been posted elsewhere on TikTok here and here, as well as on Facebook, YouTube and the video-sharing platform SnackVideo, and continues to grow in popularity more than 18.6 million views in total.
This was announced a day after Indonesia’s Constitutional Court rejected challenges to Prabowo’s victory filed by his two main rivals, who alleged government interference and rule changes that supported his candidacy.
Anies and ganjar Lawsuits filed in March 2024 and called for a repeat of the February 2024 election – in which Prabowo won almost 60 percent of the vote.
Following the court decision, the Indonesian Election Commission officially declared Prabowo the country’s next president.
But the Constitutional Court did not ban Anies and Ganjar from ever running for president again.
Court rulings
A keyword search on YouTube led to a livestream of the Constitutional Court’s verdict, which was published on April 22 on the official channel of the local broadcaster Kompas TV (archived link).
The clip of Anies and his vice president Muhaimin Iskandar corresponds to the 4:24:43 mark of the Kompas TV video.
The clip of Ganjar and his vice president Mahfud MD corresponds to the footage shown at the 4:52:21 mark of the video.
Below is a Screenshot comparison of the false post (left) and the Kompas TV recordings (top and bottom right):
Some of the audio heard in the fake TikTok video was recorded between the 4:50:48 and 4:51:13 markers of the Kompas TV footage.
It then jumps to the audio used between the 4:51:29 and 4:51:42 markers of the Kompas TV video.
In this audio recording, Constitutional Judge Arsul Sani explains why the court rejected Anie’s and Ganjar’s applications for alleged violations of campaign rules.
The false post then inserts the voice of a person imitating a judge and saying that Anies and Ganjar are now barred from running for president again.
But at no point in the live footage broadcast by Kompas TV did a judge “ban” Anies and Ganjar.
The court’s written decisions here and here also do not mention that Anies and Ganjar will ever be allowed to run for the top office again (archived links here and here).
AFP has debunked more false claims related to Indonesia’s 2024 election here.