Simon Butt – Since its establishment in 2003, the Indonesian Constitutional Court has made major changes to Indonesia's electoral laws. Until recently, perhaps the most dramatic change came from a 2013 decision requiring that, from 2019, five types of elections be held together or simultaneously (serentak) – for various constitutional and efficiency reasons.
These so-called 'five box' elections were to choose members for three legislatures (national, provincial, city/county [kabupaten]), one national Regional Representative Council (DPD), and one president and vice-president pair. Before this, legislative elections (both national and sub-national) and presidential elections had been held around three months apart.
The only type of election not held on the same day as the others was 'regional head' elections – for governors, mayors and county heads (bupati) and their deputies. Initially, these were held on different dates across Indonesia. However, the government began to synchronise them. After a difficult staged process of transition, they were finally held together for the first time on 27 November 2024.
On 26 June 2025, the Constitutional Court issued another momentous decision – the Separate National and Local Elections case. Bucking its own trend of consolidating elections, the court decided to split up national and local elections.
According to the new decision, in 2029, there must be a national election to fill the national legislature (the DPR), the DPD and the presidency. Then, in 2031, there must be local elections, held across Indonesia, to vote for provincial, city and county legislators and regional heads. The court specified that the national and local elections must be held between two and two-and-a-half years apart, with time running from the date of inauguration of national legislators or the presidential pair elected in 2029 [3.18.1].
Given the wide-ranging ramifications of the decision, the court left it to lawmakers to regulate the details of the transition, including its effect on the terms of office of local legislators and regional heads elected in 2024 [3.18.2] – an issue to which I return below.
The decision
The Separate National and Local Elections case arose from a challenge brought by Perludem (Perkumpulan Untuk Pemilu dan Demokrasi, or Association for Elections and Democracy), arguably Indonesia's leading election-focused civil society organisation.
Perludem has had notable successes in previous constitutional reviews of aspects of Indonesia's electoral systems. Here, it challenged provisions of the 2017 General Election Law that required all elections (except regional head elections) to be held together (as they had been on 14 February 2024) and provisions of the 2015 Regional Head Election Law that required regional head elections across Indonesia to be held on the same day (as they had been on 27 November 2024). Perludem argued that elections for national political office should be held separately from elections for subnational political office.
In a unanimous decision, the court agreed, giving five main reasons.
First, the court observed that holding all types of election within the same year created a very heavy workload for election organisers, which, in turn, 'compromised the quality of electoral administration' [3.16.2]. The court did not point to specific evidence to support this finding.
Second, holding these elections on the same day meant that electoral administrators who served five-year terms worked intensely for only the two years it took to plan and run elections, which created inefficiencies [3.16.2]. The implication here appears to be that electoral officials remained formally employed for the other three years of the five-year electoral cycle, but had insufficient work to do.
Third, having simultaneous national and local elections overburdened parties, who had to recruit candidates for competition across all three levels of government – national, provincial and city/county [3.16.3]. For the court, parties could therefore lose sight of their ideals and ideology in the interests of politics and pragmatism. Worse, parties might not have the opportunity, time or energy to prepare their own cadres, opening the door to transactional opportunities and leading parties to choose candidates purely on the basis of their popularity [3.16.3].
Fourth, holding elections simultaneously had the potential to cause voters to become fatigued and their 'focus to be fragmented by the choice of many candidates' during the short period they had to vote. For the court, this could 'end up reducing the quality of the exercise of sovereignty in elections' [3.16.5]. Although the court did not say so, it seems it had in mind data indicating that around 10% of votes cast in the 2019 and 2024 simultaneous elections were invalid. The court seemed to assume that the complexity of five-box elections was responsible for this.
Finally, the court observed that the system overburdened election organisers, pointing out that many officials had died or fallen ill, particularly on election day in 2019 [3.16.5].
Political and legal critiques
Few have welcomed the decision from a political perspective. Some politicians have indicated that the government will consider the decision when revising the 2017 General Elections Law. However, many others, including members of President Prabowo's party, Gerindra, have strongly criticised the decision, and suggested that the DPR might not implement it.
Perhaps most widespread is the criticism that the court has overstepped its authority by creating new norms – which, under the Constitution, is really the job of the DPR (along with the president). This type of criticism is nothing new in Indonesia, where many legislators are said to resent the court for reviewing the constitutionality of the statutes they produce, even though this is a function the Constitution requires the court to perform.
A second criticism made by various politicians, including DPR Commission II Chair Rifqinizamy Karsayuda, has more merit. This criticism is that Separate National and Local Elections contradicts a decision made by the court in 2019 – a challenge to the constitutionality of simultaneous regional head elections – another challenge brought by Perludem.
In that decision, the court had discussed which types of elections it would be constitutional to hold together. The court gave legislators six options for combining the different types of elections, including the choice the court prescribed in Separate National and Local Elections. However, in that 2019 decision, the court also said (at [3.16]) that the simultaneous running of any combination of elections would be constitutional, provided that the national legislative and presidential elections continued to be held together.
The contradiction lies in the fact that the pre-existing model – the one used in the 2019 and 2024 elections, which the court prescribed in 2013 but has now invalidated – also fell within one of the constitutional options the court gave. Because the court held in 2019 that the then-existing system was constitutional, it is difficult to justify its about-turn in 2025.
Worse, in the 2019 decision, the court imposed various conditions that lawmakers needed to fulfil if they wished to change which elections are held together. These conditions were that lawmakers:
- choose the system in a participatory way;
- make any necessary legislative change with sufficient time to perform test runs;
- consider the technical implications of any choice (keeping voting as easy as possible for voters); and
- avoid continually changing the model (which could create creating uncertainty and potential complacency about elections) [3.16].
In a subsequent decision, the court then said that, if these requirements were met, it would not entertain a constitutional challenge from applicants advocating one model over another [3.18].
By imposing this new national/local election regime in the new Separate National and Local Elections case, the court has not met these conditions. This is mostly due to differences in the nature of legislative and judicial decision-making, but suggests that the court should not have changed the electoral system. The court's decision in Separate National and Local Elections was not participatory; it did not consider the technical implications of splitting national and local elections. And, by changing Indonesia's electoral system yet again, it certainly contradicted its own urgings to avoid continually changing the model.
From a legal perspective, what stands out from Separate National and Local Elections itself is the lack of detailed constitutional argument to support the court's ultimate decision. The five reasons described above are more pragmatic than constitutional, raising questions about why the court intervened in relation to an issue that involves complex policy and financial implications, which some might argue are best left to a democratically-elected legislature. Certainly, the court mentioned that continuing to hold national and local elections simultaneously could potentially undermine the principle of the people's sovereignty (Article 1(2) of the Constitution) and the requirement that general elections be 'direct, public, free, secret, honest, and just' (Article 22E(1)) [3.16.7].
However, the court did not clearly specify how these five reasons violated these constitutional provisions.
Has the Court created a constitutional bind?
Perhaps the most problematic aspect of the court's decision is that implementing it will likely violate the Constitution itself. Article 22E states that general elections must be held every five years, including to fill subnational legislatures. But, as mentioned, the court's decision requires holding the first subnational legislative elections under the new system in 2031. That will be seven years after the 2024 elections, and clearly violates Article 22E.
Another option would be for the central government to appoint acting regional heads and local legislators in 2029 to replace those elected in 2024 whose five-year terms had expired.
There is a precedent for this in Indonesia. To enable the simultaneous regional head elections in 2024, no elections took place in areas with regional heads whose five-year terms expired in 2022 and 2023. Instead, after their terms expired, the central government replaced them with acting regional heads, most of whom were senior civil servants. This was controversial, particularly given the lack of transparency surrounding the selection of appointees. Concerns were also raised that the appointees had promoted central government interests while in office, including in the leadup to the 2024 national and regional simultaneous elections. The fear was that these appointees had mobilised local facilities, programs and budgets at the central government's behest to influence voters in those elections.
Responding to Separate National and Local Elections by appointing regional heads and local legislators for between two and two-and-a-half years would raise similar concerns. One cannot discount the possibility that key positions may be filled by central government loyalists or even retired military personnel, particularly in light of recent changes made to the TNI Law.
However, appointments do not seem to be a feasible response to the court's decision in the Separate National and Local Elections case. That could require appointing over 500 regional heads and almost 20,000 provincial and city/county legislators after their terms expire in 2029. Appointments would appear to violate the Constitution anyway. Articles 18(3) and 18(4) require that subnational legislators and regional heads be democratically elected.
Whatever way you look at it, the court really does seem to have created a constitutional Catch-22.