Presidential candidate Anies Baswedan has said that if he is elected president, he will uphold the bans on hardline groups the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) and Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI), but would be cautious about banning more mass organizations.

Anies said he would uphold the bans to respect the policies of past governments, but would decide on a similar ban through a court process.

“Every citizen has a right to associate, and the country cannot control one’s minds and feelings,” said Anies during a campaign event in Bandung, West Java, on Sunday. “If an organization engages in unlawful activities, the law will be enforced against it, and [the allegedly unlawful conduct] must be proven in court.”

The candidate also promised not to engage in arbitrary dissolutions of organizations under his government. He would let the courts decide on the dissolution due to his respect for the judicial process. 

Anies discussed his views on mass organizations in response to a question from Muhammad Farhan, a House of Representative member from the NasDem Party during the event.

Both mass organizations were dissolved during President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s time in office. The Law and Human Rights Ministry decided to dissolve the HTI on Jul. 19, 2017, while the FPI was dissolved in December 2020.

The government outlawed the organizations because their ideologies were deemed to be contrary to the Constitution and national ideology Pancasila. The FPI, previously a legal mass organization, was also disbanded because its permit as a mass organization had expired and the government refused to renew it. 

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