TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsConstitutionalizing the Pancasila presidency
Prolonged tenures of the executive have been typical of corrupt governments in burgeoning republics throughout the 20th century
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Set as preferred source
T
he question of extending presidential term limits under the Constitution for President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to contest the 2024 election has been circulating through news desks with some frequency of late, as recently as a July 7 article in The Jakarta Post.
Then, as if to cast a particularly mirthless shadow upon the question, on the same day, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse met his demise by a band of assassins. Moïse was elected under peculiar circumstances, leading to some contention about the length of his term in office. Moïse not only remained in office after the constitutionally required date of Feb. 7 but also sought to potentially extend his presidency until 2026 through constitutional amendment.
While this approach had some international support, it may have cost Moïse his life and brought brutal injury to his wife.
This second-rate danse apache brings to mind the barbarities of the Dutch Rampjaar, in which the Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelius were murdered by an aggravated lynch mob of Orangists.
There was similarly a struggle for the power of the executive prior to that most sanguine murder. It was not unreasonable of de Witt to attempt to prevent another Stadtholder from the House of Orange, but this, too, cost him his life. Neither the office of Stadtholder nor Grand Pensionary were subject to term limits. After the Rampjaar, it was all but ossified that the office of Stadtholder would be de facto hereditary, and the Republic did finally revert to hereditary monarchy after a short existence.
The authors of the United States Constitution took express note of the Dutch record. In one letter responding to the outcome of the constitutional drafting, US icon Thomas Jefferson wrote, “What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one.”
He was objecting chiefly to the absence of term limits for the US president. Luckily, then-president George Washington was determined to voluntarily relinquish the office of President, although he was under no constitutional obligation to do so.
