Vice President Jusuf Kalla said during a seminar Monday the law was simply a tool to reach the nation's objectives, a view rejected by legal experts.
"If we want to look to the future, we can't just stick to dogma. We also need to consider our objective, which is to develop our country," Kalla said when opening a seminar titled "Legal Development Vision for 2025 and Law Reform".
"Therefore, we need to adjust our regulations to materialize our objectives."
The seminar was attended by State Minister for State Enterprises Sofyan Djalil, Jakarta Vice Governor Prijanto and lawyers.
Kalla said people often viewed him as a "rule bender", which he denied.
"I only change regulations which are hampering or slowing the process of our development," he said.
Kalla said people knew Indonesia was a legal-based country, as stipulated in the 1945 Constitution, therefore all steps and views must be based on legal values.
However, "the law is very dynamic because humans are also dynamic, and at some point in time the law must be adjusted to the conditions of human beings".
Constitutional Court chief Jimly Asshiddiqie disagreed, saying that as a legal-based country, Indonesia was ruled by law, not by people.
"We used to be ruled by people because the Indonesian leadership style prioritizes prominent figures," he said.
"But we cannot do that anymore, because a leader can be changed, so we can only stick to the system or regulation."
However, laws and regulations should not be determined and implemented by one side only, nor should they take the side of specific groups, he said.
"As a legal-based country, we need constitutional supremacy because that is the result of the concept of a legal-based country, which we have chosen, and the implementation of democracy all at once," he said.
He said Indonesia had declared itself a democratic country, so it needed to implement democracy properly.
"If people consider democracy only as a tool, they will think that democracy is unimportant and they will easily find another system of administration," he said.
Senior lawyer Adnan Buyung Nasution said the law was the supreme authority in Indonesia, as a democratic constitutional country.
He also said democracy could not be seen only as a tool to reach a goal.
"Tools and goals should be seen as one. Once we consider democracy only as a tool to reach a goal, then it will be easy for us to make the end justify the means."
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