Restoring Indonesia's (Un)Constitutional Constitution: The Soepomo's Authoritarian Constitution

In recent years, there is an idea in Indonesia political discourse to restore the original version of the 1945 Constitution to undo the liberal-democratic amendments introduced between 1999 and 2002, because in the eyes of some Indonesian public figures, these amendments is not legitimate, since it eliminated the basic values of the original version of the 1945 Constitution, which was built on the ‘integralist’ concept, as propounded by Soepomo (its main architect). According to this conception, the state should be seen as a family in which the government serves a benevolent fatherly role in guiding its children (the people) to the right choice. That is why in the integralist conception, the government is not requiring the limitation of power in regards to maintaining public order. This concept clearly contradicts the basic values of the amendments in 1999 until 2002, which changes the 1945 Constitution into a constitution that represents a liberal-democratic values. This amendment shows that Indonesia has experienced what Richard Albert calls ‘constitutional dismemberment’, or changes that do not cohere with the existing constitution because it transforms the structure and identity of the constitution without formally replacing it. However, in this paper, I want to prove that this amendment was legitimate, even though it makes the 1945 Constitution into a different one. This is because the original version of the 1945 Constitution was formed only by a handful of elites in an institution formed by the Japanese imperial government when they were still colonizing Indonesia in early 1945, meanwhile, the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) members who amended the 1945 Constitution from 1999 to 2002 had a greater democratic legitimacy than the founders of the 1945 Constitution because they were elected through the 1999 elections. Apart from that, the original version of the 1945 Constitution was never intended by its founder to operate after the Indonesian revolutionary period, that happen between 1945 until 1949, so that the document can be significantly changed or even replaced by the MPR through the amendment process.