Constitutional Court researchers Ananthia Ayu Devitasari and Muhammad Reza Winata attending the International Summer School virtually, Tuesday (9/7/2021) from the Constitutional Court. Photo by Humas MK/Ifa.

---

Tuesday, September 7, 2021 | 22:06 WIB

JAKARTA, Public Relations—The Constitutional Court (MK) of the Republic of Turkey as the Center for Training and Human Resources Development (CTHRD) of the Association of Asian Constitutional Courts and Equivalent Institutions (AACC) organized The 9th International Summer School on September 7-8, 2021 on “Current Problems in Execution of Judgments: Constitutional Justice.”

The virtual program was officially opened by the President of the Constitutional Court of Turkey Zühtü Arslan on Tuesday afternoon in Indonesian Time, September 7, 2021. The participants shared the challenges and cases in relation to the execution of the decisions of the constitutional review bodies that are affiliated with the AACC.

Presentations

Two researchers of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia (MKRI), Ananthia Ayu Devitasari and Muhammad Reza Winata, participated in the program. Aside from discussing and sharing about various cases, they also delivered a presentation on “The Binding Force of the Constitutional Court of Indonesia’s Decisions: Key Issues and Future Challenges.” They talked about the MKRI’s authority to review laws against the Constitution, to decide on authority disputes between state institutions, to decide on the dissolution of political parties, to decide on disputes over general election results, as well as its obligation to decide on the House’s (DPR) opinion on an alleged violation of law committed by the president and/or vice president.

Ayu explained that the implementation of the Court’s decisions was greatly influenced by the decisions’ characteristics, especially its finality and binding nature, according to Article 24C paragraph (1) of the 1945 Constitution and the Elucidation to Article 10 paragraph (1) of the Constitutional Court Law.

“Final means there is no other legal measure to re-review the Court’s decisions. Meanwhile, the binding nature signifies the legal consequence that bind all legal subjects—citizens, legal entities, and state institutions. However, in practice, there are cases where other state institutions disregarded the Court’s decisions, which poses a challenge to the decisions’ effectiveness,” she said.

No Special Body

One of the challenge to the implementation of the Court’s decisions, Reza said, is the fact that there is no special body that serves to implement those decisions, so it depends on the awareness of other state institutions to implement the decisions.

One of the examples of this is the Circular of the Supreme Court on the singularity of judicial review and the Supreme Court’s decision on DPD (Regional Representatives Council) members being political party functionaries. Ideally, he said, all decisions by the Constitutional Court should be followed by all state institutions in order to uphold constitutional supremacy and separation of power.

There have been recommendations to mitigate the issue, such as by improving collective awareness of compliance with the Constitution, strengthening coordination between state institutions with regard to Court decisions, and expanding the collaboration with and involvement of the community, especially academics and CSOs, in order to support the implementation of all decisions.

Ideally, the Constitutional Court decisions must be executed. The litigating parties must comply with them and uphold constitutional supremacy. Non-compliance with Court decisions by litigants and other stakeholders is a significant obstacle to the effective implementation of those decisions. However, many decisions have been implemented, such as those on water resources, customary law forest, and the use of e-KPT (electronic ID card) in the 2009 election.

Writer        : Nano Tresna Arfana
Editor        : Nur R.
Translator  : Yuniar Widiastuti (NL)

Translation uploaded on 9/9/2021 11:20 WIB

Disclaimer: The original version of the news is in Indonesian. In case of any differences between the English and the Indonesian versions, the Indonesian version will prevail.

---