---

The Constitutional Court (Mahkamah Konstitusi –MK) holds an event entitled “Third Term of Constitutional Rights Socialization for Islamic Boarding School Management “ on November 6-8, 2015 at the Pancasila and Constitution Center (Pusat Pendidikan Pancasila dan Konstitusi –Pusdik), Cisarua Bogor. The event is held in collaboration with Religious Affairs Ministry. A hundred people of Islamic boarding school managements throughout Indonesia attend the event. The event aims to improve constitutional awareness.

“Today’s event is quite special because it follows with the launching of Indonesia Pintar program. The socialization materials are on the Pancasila and the Constitution and other material relevant with the program,” said Head of the Pancasila and Constitution Center Noor Sidharta in his opening speech, on Friday (6/11).

Several keynote speakers deliver lecture in the event, such as constitutional law experts Saldi Isra, M.Ali Safaat, and Andi Irmanputra Sidin. Isra delivers “The Constitution and Constitutionalism”. He explains that the Constitution has two meanings; in narrow sense and in broad sense. In narrow sense, the Constitution is the basic law of a state that made in written form, while the Constitution in broad sense means the basic law of states that made in written form and contain explicit and implicit law.

Regarding the Constitution, Isra says that there is a mandate of authority division, which is called constitutionalism. “If authority is not limited, it will be overpowered and easily abused. There is a term in constitutional law theory, called checks and balances. So, there is a mechanism of checking and balancing authority,” said Isra

Meanwhile, M. Ali Safaat explains on “the Pancasila and Citizen’s Constitutional Rights Protection”. According to Safaat, the Pancasila is a crystallization of values which derived from Indonesian people. “National ideology is influenced by many factors, among others are State’s goals and functions, ideology and social context,” said Safaat. He further says that one of the State’s goals is citizen’s constitutional rights protection as stipulated in the 1945 Constitution.

The participants become more enthusiastic when keynote speaker Irmanputra Sidin directly encourages them to conduct discussion. One of the participants asks about the role of law state in citizen’s constitutional rights. “Law state is a guarantee of citizen’s rights fulfillment. The State has role in fulfilling our rights as citizens,” explained Sidin.

Moreover, Sidin answers participants’ questions regarding citizen’s rights to freedom of speech and rights to education. “The 1945 Constitution states that every people entitled to speak, deliver information, and freedom of speech. The Constitution also states that the State shall guarantee citizen’s rights to education. 20 % of the State budget shall be allocated for education,” said him.

Noor Sidharta as keynote speaker delivers lecture entitled “the Constitutional Court in the Indonesia Constitutional System”.  Sidharta says that one of the fundamental changes of the 1945 Constitution is the changes of Article 1 paragraph 2; from “Sovereignty is in people’s hands and fully conducted by the People’s Consultative Assembly” (“Kedaulatan adalah di tangan rakyat dan dilakukan sepenuhnya oleh Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat”) which changes into “Sovereignty is vested in the people and carried out in accordance with the Constitution” (“Kedaulatan berada di tangan rakyat dan dilaksanakan menurut UUD.”). It means that the People’s Consultative Assembly (Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat –MPR) is no longer the supreme state institution and the position of each state institution is determined by its respective functions and authorities which mandated by the Constitution. Each state institution conducts checks and balances mechanism.

Sidharta also delivers on the history of the Constitutional Court of Indonesia. The Constitutional Court was established in August 13, 2003. Before the independence, Mohammad Yamin coined idea on establishing constitutional court. However, his idea was rejected because at that time, there were only a few law bachelors in Indonesia which experienced in judicial review.

The Constitutional Court has four authorities; conducting judicial review of Acts towards the Constitution, conducting state institutions authority dispute settlement, conducting general election dispute settlement, and conducting political party dissolution. The Court also has one constitutional obligation, which is examining the House of Representatives’ opinion regarding president impeachment.

After that, Janedjri M Gaffar delivers lecture entitled “the Constitutional Court and Regional Election Dispute Settlement”. Gaffar explains that regional election dispute is the dispute between regional election candidates with regional election organizers, in this case with Provincial/Regency/City Election Commission. The issue on the dispute is vote result determination.

“We already know that there are some normative issues that have been regulated in the Constitution, such as ethics code violations, administrative violations, state administrative disputes, and election criminal offenses. For general election disputes, the Constitutional Court has authority to settle regional election disputes,” said Gaffar.

Gaffar explains that Applicant party in regional election dispute settlement is regional election candidates, Respondent party is Provincial/Regency/City Election Commission and Related party is regional election candidate that gain the most vote based on vote recapitulation determined by the Respondent and has direct interest in the dispute lawsuit filed by the Applicant. (Nano Tresna Arfana/IR/Prasetyo Adi N)

---