Considerations apparently need to be given for including a mechanism of constitutional complaint as one of the human rights protection mechanism in the jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court.

This was one of the issue brought up in the limited discussion among the Constitutional Justices led by the Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court, Prof. Dr. Jimly Asshiddiqie, S.H. and former Chief Justice of the Germany Constitutional Court, Prof. Dr. Jutta Limbach and a team from Hanns Seider Foundation (HSF) Germany led by Dr. Christian Halgemer, at the hall of the Constitutional Court, on Monday April 16, 2007. This discussion was also attended by rank and file of the Secretariat General and the Registrar’s office of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia and expert staff of the Constitutional Court.

In responding the idea concerning constitutional complaint, Constitutional Justice Maruarar Siahaan, S.H. stated to journalists that constitutional complaint process is a form of public complaints with regard to objection to the treatment of the government performance to the public, laws and regulations, and court decisions, deemed contradictory to the Human Rights regulated in the constitution.

Out of about six thousand of constitutional complaints existing in Germany, only about 2 percent were granted. It means that it is also not easy to determine the constitutionality of a complaint. “If this mechanism is applied in Indonesia, at least it indicates that the government may not treat its citizens arbitrarily,” explained Maruarar. (Wiwik Budi Wasito).