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Between criticizing and insulting the President's dignity
The Criminal Code's revision has been influenced by legal policy designed to deconstruct the law’s characteristics and institutions inherited from the colonial era.
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Code red: Students from various universities protest against the Criminal Code's revision outside the House of Representatives on June 28. The protesters said the new code would stifle freedom of expression. (Antara/M Risyal Hidayat)
The discourse on the revision of the Criminal Code has regained significant public attention. Fundamentally, criminal law is the state’s legitimate form of control to limit the people’s rights and freedoms. Therefore, the limitations established by the penal code are the implementation of Article 28 J of the 1945 Constitution.
The Constitution thus serves as the foundation to restrict people’s rights and freedoms, and it ultimately aims to respect other people's rights and freedoms. Certain values related to the Constitution, such as morality, religious values, safety and public order have been embodied in the revised Criminal Code.
The primary goal of the revision is to decolonize the law. According to law professor Muladi, the decolonization mission aims to dismantle and abolish the colonial characteristics in the nation’s criminal law system. This is due to the fact that – systematically and structurally – Dutch East Indies’ criminal law contributed significantly to the Criminal Code as it stands, as stated in the Wetboek van Strafrecht voor Nederlandsch Indië (Kompas, Sept. 20, 2019).
Through the decolonization mission, there has been an attempt to constitutionalize the Criminal Code. Constitutionalization refers to changing a constitutional government's actions in line with the universal teachings of constitutionalism (Martin Loughlin, 2022). Therefore, there are objectives to be achieved from the constitutionalization of the Criminal Code revision, namely national criminal law, which has the characteristics of democratic rule of law based on Pancasila.
However, the constitutionalization attempt in the formation of the new penal code has left two crucial and interlinked issues. The first is regarding the legal policy characteristics contained in the draft, specifically Articles 218, 219 and 220. The second is the linkage between the legal policy characteristics and the President's position within the revised Criminal Code.
