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or the umpteenth time the death penalty has sparked controversy in Indonesia. This time around it is President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo who restarted the nationwide debate after he refused to grant mercy to five convicts on death row, which means they face imminent execution by firing squad.

Cabinet Secretary Andi Widjajanto said Thursday the President had signed a regulation that stipulates his rejection of the convicts'€™ plea for clemency.

For the convicts, all Indonesian nationals, Jokowi'€™s compassion would have saved their lives since they were sentenced to death for premeditated murder and drug trafficking. Jokowi says he will not pardon almost 60 other drug convicts on death row either.

Jokowi must have listened to his aides, legal experts and human rights champions, as well as people'€™s voices, before taking the tough decision.

However, there are several push factors that might have driven him to set aside considerations of human rights.

First and foremost, it is already an open secret that drugs are accessible to everybody, including minors, a situation that Jokowi describes as a state of narcotics emergency facing the nation.

On Thursday the National Narcotics Agency (BNN) found meth and marijuana inside the campus of a university located near to the BNN headquarters in East Jakarta, prompting the agency to conduct more raids in other campuses.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says Indonesia is among the largest producers of methamphetamine. Indonesia ranked third in Asia after China and Thailand in terms of the amount of meth seized in 2012: 2.1 tons, which was triple the amount seized in 2008.

Second, narcotics pose a serious threat to Jokowi'€™s much-vaunted mental revolution, which he envisions as a national character-building exercise to instill a new way of thinking and to encourage the adoption of positive values in all sectors.

The mental revolution is supposed to induce healthy lifestyles and clear minds, which are required for national development. Drug addiction will, of course, sabotage the goals.

Many governments, including Indonesia, maintain death sentences for drug traffickers because of the moral decay they have inflicted on society, which amounts to a serious crime.

Third, drug-related crimes, as well as other crimes, have continued unabated in part because of poor law enforcement, which is evident in the involvement of law enforcers in the drug supply chain and the corrupt prison administrations that enable convicted drug lords to operate their businesses from behind bars.

For most Indonesians who are longing for tough law enforcement, Jokowi'€™s merciless policy in the war on drugs looks to live up to their expectations.

The President has also showed bold enforcement of the law when he ordered the sinking of foreign boats caught poaching fish in Indonesian waters, which has been justified under the law since 2009 but never before carried out.

It is crystal clear that Jokowi wants to project an image of firmness in upholding the law. His support for the death sentence is just a logical consequence. Experts and policymakers, Jokowi included, believe capital punishment serves as an effective deterrence against crime.

Weak, inconsistent law enforcement has become a consistent threat to the rule of law in the country, as evident in public distrust for law enforcers and, hence, in widespread disobedience to the law.

Public defiance of the law is commonly visible on the streets, where motorists violate traffic rules at will because the offenses mostly go unpunished.

Jokowi could have been inspired by French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an avid proponent of the death sentence.

In Rousseau'€™s mind, wrongdoers were enemies of the state and violators of the social contract and therefore must either be exiled or put to death. A healthy state, he said, has few criminals.

In fact, the death penalty has remained in place in many democracies, including the US, which is why Indonesia has insisted on maintaining capital punishment as an instrument of deterrence, although that is not always the case.

The death penalty runs counter to Article 28A of the Constitution, which clearly stipulates the right to life and defends life as a fundamental human right that shall not be curtailed under any circumstance.

But this principle has been widely disregarded, including by the Constitutional Court as the defender of the Constitution. In 2009 the Court ruled that the right to life is not absolute and that capital punishment is a justified restriction of that right.

Jokowi, however, has apparently failed to learn from the past. The previous administration of president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono helped at least 110 Indonesians escape the death penalty in China, Iran, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, thanks in part to the unofficial moratorium on executions his government imposed between 2008 and 2012. Yudhoyono commuted the death sentences of a number of convicts, including foreign drug traffickers.

Yudhoyono'€™s foreign minister Marty Natalegawa admitted Indonesians sentenced to death overseas had benefited from the practice. Marty said Indonesia would have found it difficult to convince the governments of foreign countries to reprieve Indonesian convicts on death row if Jakarta had failed to show mercy, too.

Before resuming executions in 2013, Yudhoyono had granted 19 of the 126 clemency pleas that he received since taking office in 2004.

Now Jokowi, just over two months into his term, has refused to grant clemency to five convicts and will also withhold it from nearly 60 others.

In so doing Jokowi has put the lives of more than 100 Indonesian nationals currently facing death sentences overseas in danger.

Assuming that Jokowi knows well the risks of his decision, he must be ready to face public condemnation for failing to protect his people abroad.