Godly Constitution and Divine Enlightenment
God is not dead, at least not in Indonesia. Belief in God is not only fervent across the population, but also exalted as part of the constitutional identity of the state itself. On 3 January 2025, the Indonesian Constitutional Court issued a judgment concerning the rights of non-believers in Indonesia. The Court essentially ruled that there is ‘no room’ for the freedom to be irreligious in Indonesia. Most notably, the Court has declared that the 1945 Indonesian Constitution is a ‘Godly Constitution’, and therefore all laws must always be ‘illuminated by divine enlightenment’. The judgment represents an unusual form of constitutional theocracy, which is inherently syncretic and claims to represent the collective wisdom of all recognised religions of Indonesia.
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Is This a Constitutional Democracy
Indonesia, a country that has experimented with constitutional democracy since 1998, inaugurated its new president, Prabowo Subianto, on October 20, 2024. His so-called “Red and White Cabinet” may appear peculiar from the perspective of Western democracies due to its concentration of power. Prabowo assembled a “bloated cabinet” of 48 ministers constituting a hodge-podge of anti-Sharia pluralists, nationalists, Islamists, and others, all swearing fealty to the magico-religious Pancasila. We argue that Prabowo’s cabinet parallels the “family state”, which envisions the state as a large Indonesian family working together to maintain familial harmony.
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Justifying a Political Dynasty
The Indonesian Constitutional Court has handed down a highly controversial decision lowering the minimum age requirement for presidential candidacy. It raises further alarms about the Court's independence, as the petitioner sought to allow President Jokowi's son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, to run in the 2024 presidential elections. Worse, the current Chief Justice is married to the President's younger sister, and the Court's legal reasoning it not sound.
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