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House in spotlight over plan to revise Constitutional Court Law
According to the draft bill, MK justices can hold their position until they the age of 70, 10 years longer than the maximum age for justices set in the existing 2011 Constitutional Court Law.
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Constitutional Court justices read out their ruling for the 2019 presidential election dispute in Central Jakarta on June 27, 2019. (JP/Donny Fernando)
E
xperts have raised questions over the House of Representatives’ move to amend the Constitutional Court (MK) Law, especially as the revision may harm justices’ independence and discourage the public from exercising their rights to challenge potential controversial laws currently being deliberated by lawmakers.
According to the draft bill, MK justices can hold their position until they the age of 70, 10 years longer than the maximum age for justices set in the existing 2011 Constitutional Court Law. The minimum age of justices, however, has also been revised from 47 to 60 years old.
Nor can they be replaced, as the bill scraps a provision stipulating that justices can serve for only five years and must be reelected for another term.
The bill also decreases the number of members of the MK honorary council — a body overseeing matters ranging from justices’ compliance to the code of ethics — from five to two. It will only include one representative from the MK and another from the Judicial Commission (KY). In the prevailing law, the council consists of not only the two representatives from MK and KY but also those representing the House, the government and the Supreme Court.
"It curtails the justice monitoring system and allows justices to hold their positions for as long as possible, which could affect their independence when issuing rulings," said Erwin Natosmal Oemar, an activist from the Public Interest Lawyer Network Indonesia (PilNet) who often represents judicial review cases at the MK.
“If the court is no longer reliable, where should the public go to seek justice and challenge the laws that have harmed their constitutional rights?” he added.
Experts have also questioned the motive behind why the lawmakers pressed ahead with the deliberation, saying that amending the law on MK, the final adjudicator of disputes on the interpretation of national laws and election results, currently had no urgency.
