Mens Rea, Political Discourse, and the Limits of Freedom

Saiful Mujani, owner of the Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC) polling agency, touched on the consolidation of civil society to topple the government of President Prabowo Subianto during a halalbihalal event at the Utan Kayu Community in East Jakarta on Tuesday (31/3/2026). This immediately drew strong reactions and was considered by some parties as sedition. Meanwhile, other views affirm it as a legitimate expression of freedom of speech in democracy.

As a note, without intending to justify Saiful Mujani’s statement, this narrative emerges in a distinctive political context where the current parliamentary opposition is not functioning effectively. This is because the majority of legislative power has joined the ruling group.

The absence of a structured formal opposition has shifted critical discourse against the government more into informal spaces through intellectual forums, social media, street actions, and civil society meetings.

This is what I have always warned about from the beginning: if the parliamentary opposition is barren, what occurs is the crystallisation and radicalisation of “street opposition.”

This fact is highly problematic because it is vulnerable to exploitation by political groups and ideological factions that are anti-state, anti-Pancasila, and the like. They can multiply rapidly when the parliamentary political opposition is not working.

Since this has already happened, I myself wish to understand this controversy holistically through two different analytical lenses in the context of a democratic state: the state security paradigm and the civil liberties paradigm. These two theses are always in an ontological tension that tends to be conflictual.

Clearly, no one enjoys freedom if there is no state guaranteeing security. Thus, security is the foundational condition for civil freedom. However, security loses its moral basis and teleological orientation if it results in the extinction of civil freedom. That is roughly how the debate between these two theses plays out in security studies as well as in contemporary democracy studies.

In the state security paradigm, Saiful Mujani’s statement is clearly read as “conditioning a revolution.” This is due to the inherent motive and malicious intent (mens rea) contained in the semantic management emerging from the actor’s mind and mouth, namely “wanting to topple the president unconstitutionally.”

For personnel in security institutions, at any level, this is a potential threat that requires accurate and effective early prevention strategies.

A mosquito is killed not when it sucks blood, but since it signals a threat in a person’s ear. That is how the logic of state security operates, and the mosquito is an analogy for a threat.