Amendment to the 1945 Constitution, there is concern that it will bring Indonesia to the Authoritarian Era

Last updated on May 18th, 2021 at 05:39 am

Recently, the Indo Barometer Survey released the results of a 100-day national survey of the Jokowi-Ma’ruf Amin administration. As a result of 27.3 percent, the public believes that the 1945 Constitution needs to be amended. While the public who believes the 1945 Constitution does not need to be amended as much as 62 percent.

In the survey there were also at least five reasons for the public to see, whether or not the 1945 Constitution was amended.

Five main reasons for the public stating that the 1945 Constitution needs to be amended is because it adjusts to the demands of the times (38.9 percent), the development of the dynamics of people’s behavior (23.6 percent), elections are not in accordance with the 1945 Constitution (12.2 percent), article laws are too numerous and burdening the community (7.6 percent), and economic disparities in society are still felt (5.3 percent).

Meanwhile the five main reasons the public stated that the 1945 Constitution did not need to be amended because the 1945 Constitution had been determined since ancient times (47.5 percent), had a risk to the political stability of the State (23.2 percent), more precisely repaired rather than amended (12.8 percent ), dangerous for the integrity of the State (5.1 percent), and only for certain political interests (3.4 percent).

Responding to the results of the Indo Barometer survey, the Politician of the National Mandate Party (PAN) Bima Arya expressed concern that the amendment would bring Indonesia back. Even it was suspected that there were other things that were changed in the amendment, not only the Broad Guidelines of State Policy (GBHN).

“We will sideback, we will retreat back to the time when the authoritarian regime was at play there,” Bima Arya said in Senayan, Jakarta, Sunday (16/2).

Arya questioned the space also vision and mission of the regional head if later there was a GBHN. Because, according to him, in the GBHN the direction of development is determined from the top down.

“People say that China has a GBHN, so it’s different, it’s more centralized there. We multiparty, in my opinion it’s dangerous, don’t let the output oriented mind sacrifice our democratic values,” said the Mayor of Bogor.

Therefore, he claimed to agree and assess the amendments to the 1945 Constitution need to be suspected. “About the GBHN, I am in agreement with people who suspect that GBHN can have a certain mode, in my opinion it can indeed go there,” concluded Arya.