New Constitution or Amending Current Constitution

The issue of amending current constitution has been aroused by the DPD (Provincial Representative Council). They claim that the DPD role is very weak and also have limited function especially on proposing and/or involving on the draft bill discussion within the parliament. The DPD wants to play more role and more function in the statehood politics.

Politically, the political standing for the DPD member is more legitimate compare to the DPR member. The regulation on DPD election is stricter and they have to be better known by their people living in their respective province.

The current constitution in Indonesia had been amended for four times, as far as we could remember, a group coalition set up by the civil society organization called NGO’s Coalition for the New Constitution urge the member of the MPR (People Consultative Assembly) to draft a new constitution rather just amending the old constitution. The demand of this NGO’s Coalition had rejected by the member of MPR at that time.

In the history of Indonesian Constitution, Indonesian had experienced the original 1945 Constitution (1945 – 1949), the United Republics of Indonesia Constitution (1949 – 1950), Provisional Constitution (1950 – 1959), original 1945 Constitution (1959 – 1999), the 1945 Constitution First Amendment (promulgated on 21 October 1999), the 1945 Constitution Second Amendment (promulgated on 18 August 2000), the 1945 Constitution Third Amendment (promulgated on 9 November 2001), the 1945 Constitution Fourth Amendment (promulgated on 11 August 2002)

The current contitution creating many problem, as example, the position, role, and function of the Judicial Comission, the role and function of MPR and DPD, human rights instrument etc. This problem mainly because there were no significant debate over the constitution reform from 1999 until 2002 compare to the debate on constitution reform in 1955 – 1959 at the constitution assembly.

I think the Indonesian should write down our new constitution wich is have to be more protection on contitutionalism, democacy, and human rights. While at the same time i also have big concern on the state ideology debate between Pancasila and Islam, but again we are a democratic society so the option is let the people sound their choice “vox populi vox dei”