The Constitutional Legitimation of Authoritarianism: Lesson Learned From the Indonesia’s Experience
Keywords:
Authoritarianism, Constitutionalism, Constitutional Legitimation, Political ParadoxAbstract
Authoritarian regimes require constitutional legitimation to justify their political actions. In Indonesia, even the amendment of the 1945 Constitution in 1999-2002 has resulted in constitutionalism, contains limited power and human right, however there is still a demand from some elite political groups to return to the 1945 “original” Constitution. The original constitution has a potential to legitimate an authoritarianism. That is why this article aim to find out why the Indonesian constitution before the amendment had the potential to become an authoritarian and how the constitution functions in preventing authoritarian government after amendment. The method of this research is normative legal research or doctrinal research with statute, conceptual, and analytical approach. The data analysis technique employed in this research is qualitative, primarily utilizing content analysis and historical text analysis. This involves interpreting the legal and political meanings of the constitutional texts and their historical contexts, aiming to understand how the text of the Constitution has been used, interpreted, and applied over time. The result of this research revealed that not all constitutions have created constitutionalism. The practices of many countries have shown that using the constitution as a tool for authoritarianism to abuse constitutionalism has a pattern. The phenomenon of ‘constitutions without constitutionalism’ and ‘sham constitutionalism’ has a pattern of ‘political paradox’. The paradox pertains to the influence of culture and the constraints imposed by historical context. The experiences In Indonesia, the 1945 original Constitution has been used by the Sukarno and Suharto regimes to consolidate their power, ignoring the principles of democracy and human rights, and creating authoritarianism. After 1998 political reform, the 1999-2002 amendment of Constitution has created the more democratic constitution. Nevertheless, the calls for reinstating the original version of 1945 Constitution could be seen as the threat to democracy.
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