MTI Finds 13 of 21 Presidential Instructions Problematic, Citing Crisis in Governance

The Indonesian Transparency Society (MTI) has found that 13 of the 21 Presidential Instructions (Inpres) issued from January 2025 to April 2026 are indicated to have accountability problems. More than just a numerical finding, MTI warns that this signals a deeper crisis of governance: the most fundamental fiscal and institutional decisions are moving from constitutionally regulated spaces to instructional instruments that are almost without oversight. The issue raised by MTI lies at the heart of constitutional order. In a constitutional democracy, the state budget (APBN) is established by law and executed openly, as mandated by Article 23 of the 1945 Constitution. Approval by the House of Representatives (DPR) is not a formality, but the point at which the power to spend state funds is tested, deliberated, and accounted for publicly. According to MTI, it is this mechanism that is being emptied of its meaning. Doctrinally, an Inpres is merely an internal executive coordination instrument. It does not fall within the hierarchy of laws and regulations, must not establish norms binding on the public, and cannot be reviewed by the Constitutional Court. However, since Inpres 1/2025, MTI has found this administrative instrument shifting into a directive containing substantive fiscal and institutional decisions. Of the 13 Inpres deemed problematic, two are categorised as high severity, three as medium severity, and eight warrant scrutiny. MTI Executive Director Ahmad Jilul Qur’ani Farid stated that what is underway is a shift from a state that submits to the law to a state that uses the law to execute the will of power. ‘What we are questioning is not merely one or two policies, but a shift in the way the state is run,’ he said in a statement in Jakarta on Tuesday (23/6/2026). ‘Decisions that should arise from open deliberation in the DPR are now simply established from the desk of an instruction. The procedure appears complete, the parliamentary gavel is still struck, the state gazette is still published, but the substance has already been predetermined in the closed room of the executive,’ said Jilul. He stressed that what most needs to be guarded against is not technical legal violations, but the normalisation of disregarding the basic principles of constitutional democracy. He stated that once the substance of the APBN moves from the legislative chamber to the space of an instruction, the phrase ‘established by law and executed openly and responsibly’ loses its meaning. ‘What remains is only a formality. And this does not stop with one administration. Without institutional correction, this mechanism will be available for reuse by the next administration, whoever the leader is,’ he said. MTI places these findings within the context of a broader democratic regression. The Democracy Report 2026 published by V-Dem has classified Indonesia as an electoral autocracy since 2024.