Constitutional amendment hurts reform: Activists

Constitutional amendment hurts reform: Activists

Fitri Wulandari and Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post,
Jakarta

As the upcoming Annual Session of the People's Consultative
Assembly (MPR) will focus on the fourth batch of amendments to
the 1945 Constitution and exclude the President's accountability
report from its agenda, political activists expressed doubts on
Monday that the session would be beneficial for the country's
democratization process.

The gathering, slated for Aug. 1 through Aug. 10, is expected
to finalize the deliberation of seven chapters of the fourth raft
of amendments to the Constitution.

The activists noted that the legislature's failure to involve
the general public in the amendment process would make the
amended Constitution still far from what was desired.

Hadar N. Gumay of the Center for Electoral Reform (CETRO)
suggested that the process, which began in 1998, should have
involved the people and not let all the decisions be made by the
politicians in the Assembly.

Grouped under the Coalition for the New Constitution, CETRO
and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as well as
activists, have repeatedly pushed for a transparent process
involving the public.

"Without public participation, the amendment process will only
produce a poorly amended Constitution, like the one we have now,
which has been the subject of misinterpretation and abuse," he
told The Jakarta Post in an interview.

The Assembly, instead, has established an internal ad hoc
committee to carry out the task as mandated by the 1998 Special
Session of the Assembly following the downfall of the 32-year
Soeharto regime.

However, the process has proven sluggish -- by comparison,
Thailand needed only eight months to come up with a new
Constitution -- due to apparent horse-trading and the reluctance
of a part of the legislative body to have the Constitution
amended, seeing the process as violating "the sanctity of the
Constitution".

Ironically, the country's founding president Sukarno had
clearly pointed out that the 1945 Constitution was provisional as
the country was still in a state of war.

Political scientists have argued that the substance of the
Constitution of having been adopted from a fascistic concept of
the state as practiced by the Nazi regime in Germany, which
focused on overriding the power of the president and the
fundamental role of the functional groups, a situation revived
under Golkar, the country's ruling political force in the past.

A better, new and more comprehensive constitution, Sukarno
then said, should be produced as soon as possible.

The horse-trading practiced in the legislature was clearly
reflected in its controversial constitutional products, where the
politicians refused to return power to the people, the activists
said.

Human rights activist and lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis, who also
is a member of the coalition, pointed out that while several of
the amendments deserved praise, the amended Constitution was not
based on clear paradigms but rather was founded on conflicting
principles.

"The product is not a proper Constitution because there are
too many open-ended clauses subject to conflicting
interpretations."

Both Hadar and Todung hinted of a gloomy future for the
amendment process, fearing that the growing opposition to it
would result in deadlock during the upcoming annual session.

The coalition renewed its demands that the upcoming session
endorse the amended Constitution as a transitional constitution
pending the establishment of an independent constitutional
commission, a view that has also been supported by some political
parties.

With the setting up of a constitutional commission, a new,
more solid Constitution would likely be produced, they said.