They are lucky the nation no longer has the 1963 Subversion Law, which carried the death penalty. This is one of the first pieces of legislation that we repealed in 1998 as soon as we got rid of president Soeharto, who, like his predecessor Sukarno, had misused it to muzzle critics, for them to stay in power for long years.

Even if the campaign to delay the 2024 election falters, as surveys show there is little public support, the fact that we are having this conversation at all shows dangerous subversive minds at work among some of the nation’s top political leaders.

More specifically, the chairs of three political parties – Muhaimin Iskandar of the Nation Awakening Party (PKB), Zulkiflie Hasan of the National Mandate Party (PAN) and Airlangga Hartarto of Golkar – have openly supported and are campaigning to have the current terms of the executive and legislative branches of the government, both at the national and local levels, extended for three more years.

Unless President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo categorically denounces the plan, he could be perceived by the public to be encouraging it. It is not enough for the President to say, as he did on Friday, that he would abide by the constitution and the national political consensus.

Political leaders can easily engineer political consensus to stay in power without openly defying the constitution. This is how Soeharto kept getting re-elected in one election after another to rule the country for over three decades.

Jokowi should come out much stronger to be convincing, instead of saying that the discussion on delaying the election is part of a political free speech guaranteed in a democracy, especially since the three political parties campaigning it are members of his coalition government.

The President needs to rebut media reports circulating that the initiative to launch the discourse on delaying the elections came from his office. Keeping mum only reinforces the rumors.

It is shocking to hear that an idea that clearly would undermine the democratic political processes should come from those holding the highest offices of the nation.

But this is consistent with the previous campaign, which had also been gathering momentum, to amend the Constitution to allow a president to serve more than two terms, a move that would allow Jokowi to stay in power beyond 2024, assuming he got reelected.

Jokowi has repeatedly denied that he has any intention of serving a third term. At any rate, this avenue is closed as time runs out for the nation to amend the Constitution.

Those wanting Jokowi to stay in power after 2024, presumably with the assumption that they too would stay in power, are now campaigning to have the elections delayed. They first cited as their reason that the nation had yet to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Later they said it was the economic recovery. No doubt they would now cite the fallout of the Ukraine war. Anything to portray a nation in such a dire crisis as to be unable to hold the general elections in 2024.

Using President Jokowi’s immense popularity (a recent Kompas survey said he had more than 70 percent approval rating), these power-hungry politicians are suggesting that all elected officeholders – meaning the President, members of the House of Representatives, the Regional Representative Council, the regional leaders and the local legislative councils – keep their jobs beyond 2024, possibly until 2027.

This gives the appearance of a win-win plan for everyone in power that many would be tempted not to reject it, hence the silence among some of the political leaders, including the presidential office.

Yes, everyone wins except the people who had put them in office in the first place.

They are betraying the trust that people put in the politicians who they elected in 2019. The more than 80 percent of voters turnout then showed many people had faith in democracy.

They are betraying the Constitution that puts trust in political parties to support democracy, and not to subvert it.

This is a dangerous mentality that, if allowed to develop, would be a sure recipe for the end of democracy and a return to authoritarianism. All talks about democratic regression would become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This is clearly subversion, but it is something about which we can do little in the absence of the Subversion Law, and given the privilege that politicians enjoy in expressing their opinions, as treacherous as they are.

But come election in 2024, we hope voters will remember that Golkar, the PKB and PAN were among the political parties that tried to subvert the people’s rights, and punish them accordingly. 

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The writer is senior editor at The Jakarta Post.