The Constitutional Court (MK) conducted a trial on Act No. 51 Year 1999 on the Formation of Buol Regency, Morowali Regency and Banggai Islands Regency at the Panel Court Room of the Constitutional Court on Monday (18/2), with the agenda of Initial Examination.

The petition was filed by 12 Petitioners with different backgrounds. One of them was on behalf of the Deliberation Board of Banggai Customary, three people were members of the Regency Parliament, four people were convicts related to the bloody violence in Banggai Regency meanwhile four others were representing the death victims of the violence.

In the Petition read by the Legal Counsel, Arifin Musa SH., at the bottomline said that the petitioners rejected the movement of the Banggai Islands Regency Capital from Banggai City to the Salakan City. The Petitioners considered that article 11 of the Act No. 51 Tahun 1999 that included the stipulation that the Capital of the Regency was Salakan violated article 10 paragraph (3) of the Act a quo which said that the Capital of Banggai Islands was Banggai City.

The movement according to the Petitioners not only was it not on the Regency Parliament inisiative which meant that it violated the legality principle, it also caused a social rush that ended in bloody violence that some Petitioners lost the rights to gather and issue opinion also lost the rights to live of the members of the family. Besides that the Petitioners also considered that the movement disrupted the existence of Banggai tradition.

In the advices given by the Constitution Justice Panel Board concerning the Petitions, among others requested the Petitioners to change the statement regarding the legal counsel because one of the Counsels was not a lawyer. Besides that according to the Constitution Justice I Dewa Gede Palguna, S.H. M.H. the Petitioners should be able to prove in the Petition that they were Banggai Customary Community Board (Lembaga Masyarakat Adat Banggai) which was a Customary Law Community Union and not merely traditional people.

The same thing with the Petitioners who are the members of the Regency Parliament, they should be able to prove whether they represented the entire Parliament as an institution or not because the constitutional rights would be different. “There is a constitutional rights that can’t be passed on like what happened to the shooting victims by the police, the right to live of the victim can’t be inherited to the other members of the family. So the statement in the petition should also be changed,” he explained.

Concerning the lost of Banggai customs, Constitution Justice Natabaya said that the customs would not be lost because of the movement of the capital city. “It is true that the tradition can be lost but not the customs. There is no relationship between the movement of the government and the loss of customary law,” Natabaya pointed out.

Also added by Palguna that the filing of a case even though it was filed by many people did not mean that it will be accepted. It could be just a single individual with firm grounds then it could be accepted, so it was not the number that mattered. “Therefore the argumentation related to the constitutional rights should be changed. So that it did not make the petition bias,” added Natabaya. (Yogi Djatnika)