Two of the #ShameOnYouSBY memes making the rounds this weekend
Last weekend we got to see what happens when you anger the world’s most Twitter active city on Earth, as tweets from Jakarta and the rest of Indonesia turned @ShameOnYouSBY into the top trending topic on Twitter for most of the weekend (until it mysteriously disappeared) thanks to the outrageous walkout of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party during the vote on the bill eliminating direct elections for regional official (RUU Pilkada)
Feeling the heat and realizing his legacy might be completely ruined, SBY went into damage control mode, releasing multiple statements on how disappointed he was by the vote, how we wouldn’t sign the bill (which doesn’t even matter apparently) and how he would order a full investigation into who ordered the walkout (Nurhayati Ali Assegaf, the Democrat chairwoman at the House, already admitted to giving the order, but others still say SBY and his son Ibas materminded the whole thing).
With rage over the regional election bill remaining strong, SBY just announced he would be cutting his trip to Japan short so he could come back to Jakarta tomorrow to discuss the bill with the Constitutional Court to see if there is a way it could be blocked.
Unlike all of SBY’s crocodile tears of disappointment over the bills passage, a visit to the Constitutional Court might have some tangible effect on preventing the law from being passed. Most experts agree that the only thing that can stop the bill from becoming law is for it to be deemed unconstitutional.
Organizations are lining up to file their judicial reviews of the law, and many of them feel quite confident.
Ray Rangkuti, the director of the Indonesian Civil Circle (Lima) part of a coalition of organizations filing a joint review, was quoted in The Jakarta Globe as saying, “We will ask the court to cancel the regional election law and to place a moratorium on regional elections throughout Indonesia until the Constitutional Court issues its verdict on this matter. The law is clearly against the Constitution and Pancasila [Indonesia’s five founding principles],”
But others aren’t so sure. As quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Hugo Brennan, an analyst for risk-advisory company Maplecroft, “That case will be extremely difficult to prove. The constitution states only that regional leaders ‘must be elected democratically,’ but doesn’t explicitly state that the process has to be through direct general elections.”
Both arguments seem to have some validity, so the reality is probably that the courts will have a fair amount of leeway in their interpretation. But history has shown that the country’s courts often calculate populist considerations into their decisions, so organized, real-life protests will hopefully help sway them.
We really really hope so. The most omnious thing we’ve read today is a theory put forth by Democratic lawmaker Hayono Isman that the passage of RUU Pilkada could lead to a scenario where the Merah Putih coalition gains control of Parliament, regional heads and the People’s Consultative Assemblies (MPR) then they could easily ammend the constitution to allow the MPR to choose the president. And who do you think Merah Putih might choose for that role?
