Constitutional Justice Enny Nurbaningsih delivering a keynote speech at the opening of the Constitutional Law Festival 2024 (CLFest 2024), Friday (9/13/2024). Photo by MKRI/Bayu

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MALANG, Public Relations of the Court - Constitutional Justice Enny Nurbaningsih delivered a keynote speech on "Reviewing Judicial Restraint and Judicial Activism in Political Contestations to Guarantee Legal Legitimacy" at the opening of the Constitutional Law Festival 2024 (CLFest 2024). This festival was organized by the Faculty of Law, Brawijaya University (UB) in collaboration with the Constitutional Court (MK) on Friday (9/13/2024) at UBTV 2nd floor , Rectorate Building, Brawijaya University, Malang.

In this festival, the Dean of the Faculty of Law, Brawijaya University, Aan Eko Widiarto and the Head of the Legal and Administrative Bureau of the Constitutional Court's Registrar's Office, Fajar Laksono Suroso, were also present. Justice Enny started with a statement about how to unite positivism and progressivity in law.

"This is important in our joint efforts to be able to make efforts to strengthen living constitution, not only placing the constitution as a mere semantic value, but how the constitution can be a part that drives our life order together," said Justice Enny.

Justice Enny said that the CLFest activity was part of developing people's awareness of the constitution. Justice Enny gave the example of the democracy party that will be held in 2024. "In the near future an extraordinary democratic party will take place in 37 provinces and 508 districts/cities. This is something extraordinary. Hopefully it can go well," she said.

Furthermore, Justice Enny stated that even though the Court had just finished a big democratic party in 2024, namely the simultaneous national elections for the presidential and legislative elections. There were 45 decisions granting the petitioner's application. "Why is it that until then there is a Court’s decision that is granted very clearly that in the Election Law all authority has been divided completely, the authority that has been given to the KPU is clear, the authority given by Bawaslu is even clearer, because its authority is very strong in the Election Law, including the authority given by DKPP and the Court," she explained.

Justice Enny also explained that one of the Court's authorities is to resolve disputes over election results. Justice Enny said that many people often say that the Court's job is only about statistical figures. "I am trying to find out why until now the completion of the presidential election dispute is only 14 days, the legislative election disputes is 30 days, and the regional head election disputes is 45 days. Then why is that time determined differently? "If we look for the original intensity of the minutes of the hearing, will this presidential election be simpler  than the legislative or regional elections," she said.

Meanwhile, Head of the Court's Legal Affairs and Registrar Administrative Bureau, Fajar Laksono Suroso, said that the Court’s collaboration with the Faculty of Law, Brawijaya University in organizing CLFest has taken place eleven times. "For the Court, there are similarities between the Court and universities, both the Court and universities have strong academic traditions. The Court has a scientific tradition or academic tradition, at least as long as the Court has been present for 21 years, we have really felt that academic tradition," he explained.

Fajar gave an example of the scientific tradition that takes place at Court. These include the Court’s employees who have graduated or are currently pursuing doctoral degree level. Apart from that, there is a tradition of publishing scientific books and publishing journals, both the Constitutional Journal and Constitutional Review.

"In another scientific tradition, we have a program of constitutional journals that are indexed by Scopus. "We also have published books every year in the last 5 years," he explained. Fajar said that the cooperation built by the Court by holding CLFest was a manifestation of the Court's responsibility together with the academic community to increase constitutional awareness and also introducing the Court and its role. "One of them is properly recognizing what the  Court is, what the role of the Court is and how citizens experience constitutional losses and then resolve them at the Court. For the Court, this is an ongoing program and collaboration with campuses continues to be encouraged, more than 250 MoU have been signed by the Court with campuses including UB and private campuses throughout Indonesia," explained Fajar.

Apart from that, the Dean of the Faculty of Law, Brawijaya University, Aan Eko Widiarto, hoped that this collaboration can increase the contribution of universities to state administration resources—especially in the field of law enforcement. "Hopefully the law enforcement in the future will lead to an era where democratic rule of law grows and develops ideally, there will be no democracy ruled by oligarchy, that is our hope for the young generation and all Indonesian citizens," he said. (*)

Author            : Bayu Wicaksono
Editor             : Lulu Anjarsari P.
Translator       : Donny Yuniarto (NL)

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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