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Rule of (by) law and capitalistic political exploitation
The making and enforcing of laws must be prospective, open and clear in order to prevent ambiguous and obscure interpretation.
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Decision day: Constitutional Court Chief Justice Anwar Usman (right) and Justices (from left to right) Enny Nurbaningsih, Arief Hidayat, Saldi Isra and Daniel Yusmic Pancastaki Foekh prepare for a hearing on Oct. 16, 2023 to read out the court’s decision on a judicial review motion filed against age limits for presidential and vice presidential candidates. (Antara/Akbar Nugroho Gumay)
O
ur political leaders often say that power belongs to the public. When there are controversies about their policies or political and legal maneuvers, they often turn to an easy line of excuse: “leave it to the public” or “let the public judge”.
While this sounds like siding with the public, it is in fact very disingenuous. People are left in the dark of a legal and political process but forced to decide and accept the commoditization of a certain political product like candidates for political office.
Political processes and public institutions, like political parties and the constitutional courts that are supposed to serve the interest of the public, are misused by being turned into manufacturing bodies for converting political power into marketable objects in the public sphere.
In this process, the public is treated not as partners and owners of public authority, but simply as consumers of certain political products in a market of power politics, where public political sentiments and preferences are often exploited for the political benefits of the few elites.
The phrases “leave it to the public” or “let the public judge” are then nothing more than expressions of such political exploitation, while the exploiters tend to wash their hands of the controversies over certain political products they have manufactured through a corruptive procedure.
A recent example of this tendency is the controversial decision of the Constitutional Court regarding the minimum age limit for presidential and vice presidential candidates. Law and legal enforcement agencies have been used as a political industry manufacture to produce a marketable political candidate, who is supposed to have only limited marketable political value for vice presidential office under the previous regulatory framework.
When politics for power and various interests try to shape a legal system and turn legal enforcement agencies into a manufacturing body for the commoditization of a political product for partial interest, the rule of law in fact morphs into the rule by law. This literally means the rule of politics.
