Legal counsel Priskila Oktaviani delivering the Petitioners’ demands at the preliminary hearing for the judicial review of Law No. 7 of 2011 on Currency, Tuesday (6/17/2025). Photo by MKRI/Ifa.

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JAKARTA (MKRI) — Zico Leonard Djagardo Simanjuntak, an advocate, has filed a material judicial review petition of Article 5 paragraph (1) letter e and Article 5 paragraph (2) letter c of Law No. 7 of 2011 on Currency to the Constitutional Court (MK). The preliminary hearing for case No. 94/PUU-XXIII/2025 on Tuesday, June 17, 2025 was presided over by Constitutional Justices Arief Hidayat (panel chair), Anwar Usman, and Enny Nurbaningsih.

Article 5 paragraph (1) letter c of the Currency Law stipulates that “The general characteristics of Rupiah banknotes as referred to in Article 2 paragraph (2) shall at least include: c. the denomination in numerals and letters as its nominal value.” The Petitioner’s legal counsel Priskila Oktaviani argued that the many zeros in the denomination of the rupiah is inefficient. She noted that many countries have redenominated their currencies, a measure which also reflects the stability of their respective national economies.

Furthermore, the Petitioner contended that large denominations often leads to miscalculations in everyday transactions, particularly in digital transactions using the Indonesian real-time payment system QRIS (Quick Response Code Indonesia Standard). Such errors, caused by the excessive number of zeros, may also create opportunities for fraudulent acts. For example, if a cashier or the payment system acts dishonestly, they could deliberately ignore such errors and withhold any excess payment, causing financial loss to the Petitioner and to others who frequently rely on digital payments.

“For these reasons, we request that Article 5 paragraph (1) letter c and Article 5 paragraph (2) letter c of Law No. 7 of 2011 on Currency be declared unconstitutional and not legally binding insofar as it is not interpreted to mean that ‘the nominal value must be adjusted through a conversion of the rupiah denomination at a ratio of Rp1,000 (one thousand rupiah) to Rp1 (one rupiah), and Rp100 (one hundred rupiah) to 10 cents, with corresponding adjustments mutatis mutandis to all other rupiah denominations,’” stated Priskila as she read the Petitioner’s petition during the panel session.

Read the Law in Full

Responding to the petition, Constitutional Justice Enny Nurbaningsih stated that in Decision No. 23/PUU-XXIII/2025, the Court declared a similar petition inadmissible due to being unclear. “(The Petitioner) needs to read Law No. 7 of 2011 in full and comprehensively since the demands (in the petitums) so that the Court revise the Law, would there be any issue or impact? Is there any of the Petitioner’s constitutional rights that has been violated? Can the Court interfere as much in relation to other provisions in other articles?” she asked.

Meanwhile, Constitutional Justice Anwar Usman emphasized that the Petitioner should clarify the parameter for his constitutional impairment due to the current denomination of the rupiah. “Rewrite it with the grounds of constitutional harm and its reasons as well as the articles on which the review is based,” he advised.

Before adjourning the session, Constitutional Justice Arief Hidayat announced that the Petitioner would have 14 days to revise the petition, which should be resubmitted by Monday, June 30, 2025 to the Registrar’s Office. The Court will schedule a petition revision hearing later on.

Author       : Sri Pujianti
Editor        : Lulu Anjarsari P.
PR            : Fauzan Febriyan
Translator  : Yuniar Widiastuti (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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