Jakarta – The Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) has slammed a move by President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo to issue Government Regulation in Lieu of Law (Perppu) Number 2/2022 on the Jobs Law.
The Perppu revokes Law Number 11/2020 on Job Creation that was declared conditionally unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court (MK) last year.
"The YLBHI believes that the issuance of this Perppu is clearly a form of insubordination, a betrayal or coup d'etat against the constitution of the Republic of Indonesia and constitutes a symptom that further shows the authoritarianism of the Joko Widodo administration", YLBHI Chairperson Muhammad Isnur told CNN Indonesia in an SMS message on Friday December 30.
The issuance of the Perppu, explained Isnur, shows that Widodo is unwilling to democratically discuss policies that have a big impact on the nation's life through meaningful participation as ordered by the Constitutional Court.
He believes that Widodo has truly betrayed the constitution and has gone against the principles of a democratic constitutional state.
"The president has in fact shown that power rests in his own hands, there's no need for discussion in the DPR [the House of Representatives], no need to listen or provide an opportunity for public participation", he added.
According to Isnur, the Perppu on the Jobs Law does not meet the requirements for its issuance such as a compelling interest, a legal vacuum or the formulation of a law that cannot proceed as usual.
"The impact of the Ukrainian-Russian war and the threat of inflation and stagflation which haunt Indonesia are pretexts that have been fabricated and make no sense in the issuance of this Perppu", said Isnur.
"The pretext of a legal vacuum is also a pretext that has no basis and in fact shows inconsistency where the government has always claimed that the Job Creation Law is still in effect even though the MK declared it conditionally unconstitutional", he added.
Furthermore, Isnur is of the view that the issuance of the Perppu shows the consistently reckless nature of policy making for the sake of facilitating the desires of investors and capitalists.
"It is clearly apparent from the government's statement during the press conference that issuing this Perppu was needed to create legal certainty for business, not in the interests of the ordinary people as a whole", said Isnur.
Earlier, Widodo said that although the situation in Indonesian appears normal at the moment, it is in fact still engulfed in global uncertainty. He added that basically the world at the moment is not in a good state. According to Widodo, the risk of uncertainly still exists.
Therefore the government has tried to anticipate this through the Perppu to provide legal certainty to domestic and foreign investors.
"It is the threat of this risk of uncertainty that motivated us to issue the Perppu, because it is to provide legal certainty, [to address] a legal vacuum, in the perception of both domestic as well as international investors. That is what's most important, because our economy in 2023 will very much depend upon investment and exports", said Widodo. (ryn/pmg)
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "YLBHI Kecam Perppu Ciptaker Jokowi: Ini Kudeta Konstitusi".]
