C

onstitutional Court chief Arief Hidayat said that all court rulings were final and binding, including the Criminal Code'€™s (KUHP) provisions on presidential defamation that were revoked in 2006.

Arief said the provisions that were revoked by the court had been revived in law amendments.

'€œFor example [several articles revoked] from the Legislative Institutions (MD3) Law have been reinstated, but I don'€™t recall any judicial review on the articles,'€ he said.

The government recently revealed a plan to make insulting the President and Vice President a crime by proposing new articles for the KUHP bill, which is among the House of Representatives'€™ priority bills this year.

President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo said he was not bothered by insults and criticism and that the House may reject the proposed articles.

He said that he is just forwarding a revision plan that had been proposed earlier by former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono'€™s administration.

In the 2006 ruling, the Constitutional Court almost unanimously ruled that the three articles in the KUHP '€” articles 134, 136 and 137 '€” undermined the right to freedom of speech mandated by the Constitution and caused uncertainty, as those articles were subject to multiple interpretations.

At that time, the court'€™s ruling, which was in favor of lawyer Eggi Sudjana and activist Pandapotan Lubis, who were facing charges for slandering Yudhoyono and his aides, was applauded by human rights and political activists.