The regulation allows the ministry to start recruiting the first 25,000 members of the reserve corps.

Even before its inception in 2019, the PSDN Law had stirred debate over its legislation and substance. Procedure-wise, the law is deemed as flawed, as it was deliberated hastily in a manner that excluded transparency and public consultation. This process of legislation is seen to violate Law No. 12/2011 on the Formulation of Laws and Regulations, which mandates public consultation in formulating any law or regulation.

Meanwhile, in terms of substance, the PSDN Law contains problematic articles that are open to multiple interpretations that contradict human rights principles and standards.

One of the main problems of the PSDN Law is its considerably broad scope of threat. Article 4, Paragraph 2 of the law defines the scope of threat as inclusive of military threats, non-military threats and hybrid threats. A hybrid threat is a combination of both military and non-military threats.

According to Article 4, Paragraph 3 of the law, the three aforementioned types of threats are further broken down into aggression, terrorism, communism, separatism, armed rebellion, natural disasters, environmental damage, border violations, trafficking and theft of natural resources, outbreaks of disease, drug trafficking and abuse, cyberattacks, nuclear attacks, biological attacks, chemical attacks and other types of threats that endanger the sovereignty, territorial integrity or the security of the Republic of Indonesia.

The law’s broad scope of threat may create a distinct problem, as Komcad can be deployed to deal with any threats to domestic security that the government claims to have risen from communism, terrorism or domestic conflicts, a move that could instead trigger communal or horizontal conflicts in society.

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