Excluded from the discussion of the political elite and their backers are the impacts of postponing this democratic process. If the general elections can be suspended, those in power can realize whatever they want.
By
Bivitri Susanti
·5 minutes read
Kompas/Wawan H Prabowo (WAK)
Bivitri Susanti
One can be sure that not many people are thinking of the 2024 general elections as they queue for cooking oil, which is now in short supply. Most Indonesians are currently haunted by the prices of basic necessities as the fasting month of Ramadan draws near, which are rising slowly but surely.
However, the ongoing discussion among elite politicians is different. What they are discussing is how to extend the power they currently hold. This is being sought by postponing the 2024 general elections for several months or years, so that the terms of office of the president and other elected officials can be extended until the next polls.
Is this possible? Constitutionally, delaying the general elections violates the Constitution because we are not in a state of emergency leading to a national crisis that entails the suspension of the general elections. If arguments on the pandemic and economic recovery are put forward, don’t forget that Indonesia has recently made an important and high-cost decision: relocating the nation’s capital.
The countries that postponed their elections early on during the pandemic, according to data from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), held their postponed elections up until the beginning of this year. Meanwhile, we are talking about holding a general election in the next two years, and already held the simultaneous regional elections just as the shadow of uncertainty from the pandemic started to fall at the end of 2020.
Textually, only one article in the 1945 Constitution is indeed at issue, which is Article 22E that obligates holding the general elections regularly every five years. But unconstitutionality does not merely concern being in breach of a single article. The Constitution is essentially the concept of the limitation of power as expressed in the articles within. It means that discussing a constitutional amendment for the purpose of legalizing an attempt to negate the limitation of power is an unconstitutional action.
In his statement quoted in Kompas on Saturday (5/3/2022), President Joko Widodo has in fact not yet given a definitive response on the discourse over postponing the general elections. Legalism was even used to approach the issue when he said that the discourse on deferring the elections could not be banned, as it was part of being a democracy, and that we should also “abide by the Constitution”.
The question is, what if the Constitution is amended so that Article 22E no longer poses a problem? Should we continue to abide by the text of a constitution that is actually unconstitutional in the context of the concept of the limitation of power? The answer is, certainly, no.
Yet not everyone will reject the betrayal of the Constitution outright. This is because postponing the general elections will not only favor the president, but also the political actors around him. The oligarchy, the group of political actors that have so far been controlling the decision-making process, prefer unrestricted power. The action of draining natural resources through the extractive industries and infrastructure development will run uninterrupted as long as the people in power remain unchanged. We can see here why holding the general elections regularly is important to democracy. Without regular elections, there will be no rotation of the political elite. The strong oligarchy will remain unscathed and will continue to protect themselves.
So we are at a disadvantage as ordinary citizens without power, no power even to procure cooking oil and other basic goods at affordable prices. Worse still, it is not only the authorities in favor who remain silent, and some intellectuals are also showing no reaction, either. Some of them have been coopted, while others use the narrow view of legalism from a standpoint that will always justify existing legalized matters, although they are faulty in principle. This outlook has been noted as a phenomenon of autocratic legalism in several countries that have legalized autocracies simply by amending their constitutions. For instance, this happened in Venezuela in 2015 and in Hungary in 2018.
As ordinary people, we should thus be anxious because we can see that the chairmen of parties in the government coalition have launched this discourse. There is even a study circulating to justify suspending the elections, conducted by a think tank whose members have close ties to the authorities. We should also be cautious, because the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) keeps encouraging a constitutional amendment to restore the [defunct] State Policy Guidelines (GBHN).
In fact, with the present political configuration, it will not be difficult to amend the Constitution if the budget and facilities have been readied. Article 37 of the Constitution stipulates that one-third of the MPR membership, comprising 575 members of the House of Representatives (DPR) and 136 members of the Regional Representatives Council, can start the process of amending the Constitution. A meeting to this end can be convened on the attendance of two-thirds of MPR members and a constitutional amendment can be approved if more than half of all MPR members agree. At present, there is a very big coalition with close ties to the government.
Finally, excluded from the discussion of the political elite and their backers are the impacts of postponing this democratic process. If the general elections can be suspended, those in power can realize whatever they want.
BIVITRI SUSANTI, Lecturer, Indonesia Jentera School of Law
