Constitutional Justice Arief Hidayat speaking at the national seminar and public lecture by Tanjungpura University of Pontianak, Thursday (3/31/2022). Photo by Humas MK/Hendy.

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Friday, April 1, 2022 | 13:13 WIB

JAKARTA, Public Relations—Constitutional Justice Arief Hidayat and Secretary-General M. Guntur Hamzah spoke at the national seminar and public lecture on “The Constitutional Court and the Protection of Citizens’ Constitutional Rights” by Tanjungpura University (Untan) of Pontianak, West Kalimantan on Thursday, March 31, 2022.

In his lecture, Justice Arief Hidayat said that today’s era is both good and bad. The advances of information technology have affected significant changes amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Amid the pandemic, advances of information technology allowed us to keep in touch. In the last two years, all activities are conducted virtually due to these extraordinary advances. However, we must be aware of the weaknesses if we don’t use social media responsibly,” he said.

This, he added, is because through social media, people can frame hoaxes and slanders as truths and they can easily be viral. Therefore, he said, we must be cautious and responsible in using social media.

“I have a message in relation to this: let’s work together to keep this growing social media in Indonesia into social media that have positive benefits. So, we must use it responsibly. We must not be influenced and carried away by the current and spread lies, hatred, slander. [This era] is known as the post-truth era because a lie, something that is not true, if repeated and circulated, may become obscure, so we must be careful in the life of the nation and state,” he stressed.

Meanwhile, Secretary-General M. Guntur Hamzah talked about the history of the Constitutional Court. It started with a proposal by Mohammad Yamin during a session of the Investigating Committee for Preparatory Works for Independence (BPUPKI). He asserted that the Supreme Court should have been granted the authority to review laws. However, this idea was rejected by Soepomo for several reasons: the Constitution at the time did not recognize separation of power, but distribution of power. In addition, there were not many law graduates at that time.

“Indonesia did not have qualified law graduates to guard the judicial review institution,” he explained.

Writer        : Utami Argawati
Editor        : Nur R.
Translator  : Yuniar Widiastuti (NL)

Translation uploaded on 4/13/2022 13:53 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.

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