Constitutional sustainability

It should be a remorseful record for the article, titled Rebirth of Constitution without legitimacy (The Jakarta Post, Nov. 28) to disclose the alleged failures in attempts to redraft the Constitution throughout the periods of 1945, 1949, 1950, 1956 to 1959 and 1999-2002 till today. Such revelation of constitutional inconsistencies leads to the following question: If the record is true, shouldn't the scholars of constitutional law have been admonished for the reported failures in the redrafting of the Constitution?

During the period of revolution, Indonesia already had the 1945 Constitution, meeting, given the precarious conditions and exigencies of the period, the formal requirements for the legality and legitimacy of the measures taken as solutions to constitutional problems.

Contrary to the alleged failures in the redrafting of the Constitution, the national leaders and the jurists at that time made a masterful achievement with the transformation of the federal system of the Republic of the United States of Indonesia (R.U.S.I; RIS) to the unitarian system of the Republic of Indonesia (RI) by virtue of the Charter of Agreement of May 19, 1950 on the establishment of the unitarian state concluded between the R.U.S.I. government and the RI government.

The outstanding historical feature in the constitutional law of RI was that the Republic was a constituent state (of the total 16 states) within the R.U.S.I. and that before May 16, 1959 all constituent states had declared merger with RI, while East Sumatra as a constituent state had expressed the desire to join the newly projected unitarian state via the R.U.S.I.

As a milestone in the transformation process from the federal system back to the unitarian system, the Charter of Agreement declared the formation of the unitarian state "as a materialization of the concept of RI aimed at in the Proclamation (of Independence) of Aug. 17, 1945."

The federal system of R.U.S.I., existing since Dec. 27, 1949 following the transfer of sovereignty from the Netherlands) lasted for only eight months as on Aug. 15, 1950 the Provisional Constitution of R.I. -- as the new unitarian state -- was promulgated.

To crown this constitutional achievement, in September 1950 Indonesia joined the United Nations as its 60th member.

So the rebuke about the range of failures in the history of Indonesian constitutional law may seem unwarranted. Emulating the founding fathers in their success to preserve constitutional sustainability, the incumbent Constitutional Commission should make this success their exemplary spiritual and motivating guidance to accomplish their noble task.

S. SUHAEDI
Jakarta