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Promoting democracy and finding the right direction
A review of major constitutional developments in Indonesia
Nadirsyah Hosen
Indonesia is a nation of 246 million people in search of a path to political, social,
economic and legal reform. The democratic transition began in 1998 when
President Soeharto resigned after thirty-two years in office, following the
economic crisis which hit Indonesia in mid- 1997 , mass demonstrations, student
demands for reform and international pressure. Reform of the 1945 constitution has
been one of the most important aspects of the transition to democracy in Indonesia.
The amendments have changed the political game by establishing democratic
principles of separation of powers, checks and balances, and revising the
constitutional framework for executive–legislative relations. Moreover, these
amendments have fundamentally altered the rules under which the state relates
to its citizens; the three branches of government deal with one another; civilians
and the military interact, and the national, provincial, district and village author-
ities relate to each other.
There is a fear that free and fair elections as a requirement of democracy in lands
where Islam is a majority religion would produce Islamic theocracy, instead of
democracy. For instance, in 1992 the Islamic Salvation Front (Front Islamique
du Salut – FIS) won the majority in Algeria and in 2006 Hamas won the elections
for the Palestinian Legislative Council.^1 Western dominant views of Islam
and politics are also shaped by Saudi wahabism, Taliban militancy and Iranian
‘theocracy’. However, Indonesia – the largest Muslim country in the world – shares
a different experience of ‘Islamic democracy’ in the Muslim world.
The 1999 , 2004 and 2009 elections in Indonesia have demonstrated that
Indonesian people have exercised their constitutional rights to rotate elites, to select
(^1) See William Quandt,Between Ballots and Bullets: Algeria’s Transition from Authoritarian-
ism(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998 ) and Graham Usher ‘The demo-
cratic resistance: Hamas, Fatah, and the Palestinian elections’ ( 2006 ) 35 ( 3 )Journal of
Palestine Studies 20.