Aftermath: Reformasi and the Not-So-New Constitution
After being reinstated in 1959, and providing a basis for the two authoritarian regimes to rule Indonesia for nearly 40 years, the unexpected fall of the New Order regime due to the economic crisis that hit Asia in 1997 prompted Indonesia’s transition to democracy.
A public demand followed to create a new democratic constitution for Indonesia.[468] The emergence of such demands was quite surprising, considering that from 1959 to 1998, both authoritarian regimes that ruled Indonesia were persistent in perpetuating the myth that the 1945 Constitution was a sacred document that could not be changed.However, despite the impetus for a transition to democracy, it should also be noted that the myth that the 1945 Constitution was a sacred document still persisted in the minds of MPR members that had the power to change the 1945 Constitution. This led them to decide only to amend the 1945 Constitution instead of replacing it with a new one.[469] Several factions in the MPR, including the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP), the largest party at that time, which was also the main proponents of the transition to democracy, refused to conduct any amendments to the 1945 Constitution because they still considered the document to be a symbol of Indonesia’s independence from colonial rule.[470]
In the end, after a long-negotiated process filled with many compromises, the 1945 Constitution was successfully amended by the MPR from 1999 until 2002. However, this amendment resulted only after several agreements were reached by all of the factions in the MPR, including not changing the Preamble of this Constitution.[471] This is because some factions, such as the PDIP and the Armed Forces, worried that if the changes occurred to the Preamble, it would re-open the debate to make Islam the official religion of Indonesia.[472] This issue in the constitution-making process in 1945 had been a source of division among the drafters of the 1945 Constitution.
During the amendment process to the 1945 Constitution, Indonesia faced a massive sectarian conflict between Muslim and Christian groups in some of the Eastern parts of its archipelago. Therefore, many MPR members believed that re-opening the debate about the position of Islam in the 1945 Constitution could lead to a disintegration of Indonesia.[473]Although there was no expectation that this process would be able to produce a new democratic constitution for Indonesia, this amendment surprisingly succeeded in changing the character of the 1945 Constitution towards a more democratic one. This amendment created several mechanisms to limit government powers, such as the Constitutional Court with the power to perform a judicial review, adopt many human rights norms as contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), abolish the power of the MPR to appoint the President, and introduce a direct mechanism to elect the President. Furthermore, it limits the President's terms of office to only two five- year terms and transfers the primary legislative power from the President to the DPR. Some of these changes show that this amendment heavily embodied liberal-democratic values[474] - an apparent contradiction to the original version of the 1945 Constitution based on the idea of Soepomo's integralist concept that emphasised the concentration of state power in the hands of the President. This apparent contradiction led many people in Indonesia - usually older politicians or retired military officers from the previous authoritarian regime - to condemn this amendment as illegitimate since it changed the 1945 Constitution into a different document from the one previously enacted in 1945.[475] In fact, there is also one leading Indonesian constitutional law scholar that considers the adoption of many elements of liberalism in this amendment has abolished the anti-colonial character of the 1945 Constitution,[476] even though the substance of this amendment which eliminates the integralist concept is actually the one that reduces the colonial influence in the 1945 Constitution.
VII.