JAKARTA: Rasyid Gumilar and his fellow Padjadjaran University students were heading to Jakarta by bus last year to protest the revision of the Indonesian Military (TNI) Law. Midway through the journey, however, he learned that the House of Representatives had already passed the contentious amendment.
“We’d travelled far from Bandung [in West Java] only to see the law had been passed,” the 25-year-old law graduate said this week. “That made me think taking to the streets wasn’t enough. I started wondering what else we could do.”
Rasyid is among a growing number of young Indonesians turning to the Constitutional Court to challenge legislation that they believe threatens their rights, using the judiciary as one of the few remaining avenues where they can pursue change.
Shortly after the TNI Law was passed in March 2025, Rasyid and four of his colleagues took to the Constitutional Court and filed a petition for a judicial review of the law, which they claimed lacked public participation in its drafting.
Their petition was among the first in a wave of legal challenges against the amendment, following protests against the rushed and opaque deliberation of the law and several provisions that expanded military roles in civilian affairs.
While the court dismissed the petition in September 2025, citing the students’ lack of legal standing, Rasyid believed the action had sparked interest among his juniors to also pursue judicial challenges against laws they considered unconstitutional.“We want to show our juniors that activism doesn’t have to be only on the streets. It can also be pursued in the courtroom,” he said.
Bernita Matondang, 26, is another young petitioner who has repeatedly voiced her concerns to the court. The law student from the Open University grew worried when the new Criminal Code (KUHP) criminalised insulting the government and state institutions. Fearing it could restrict freedom of expression, she challenged its provisions.
“We students have an open online forum where we often criticise the President and government policies,” she noted. “But with the KUHP provision, someone in the forum could report our criticism as defamation.”
In August, the court ruled in her favour and scrapped the criminal penalties, in a move Bernita said showed that “democracy in Indonesia is still alive.” The courtroom has since become familiar territory for Bernita.
She has now filed several judicial review petitions and also represented other petitioners. Her latest petition, filed on Monday (Nov 2), challenges provisions under the Tax Harmonisation Law that subject sanitary pads to value-added tax (VAT). The issue has sparked online debate in recent weeks, with women voicing frustration over being taxed on products essential to their biological needs.
Fight for common good
Constitutional Court deputy chief justice Saldi Isra corroborated the growing presence of young petitioners in his courtroom, saying that they bring grievances and aspirations shared by many Indonesians.
“Looking at the past three to four years, those coming to the court the most are the younger generation, from which a new generation of Indonesian legal actors has been born,” he said in a discussion last month.
While the court does not keep records of petitioners by age, court spokesperson Pan Mohamad Faiz said petitions filed by people under 30 had increased this year. The growing challenges from young Indonesians runs parallel to the rise in judicial review petitions filed with the Constitutional Court last year, which reached a historic record of 366 petitions.
Padjadjaran University constitutional law expert Susi Dwi Harijanti attributed the trend to greater awareness among young people of their legal and constitutional rights. “I see this [trend] as rooted in the principle of civic courage, with the younger generation daring to fight for the common good and a better life,” she said on Oct. 30.
Susi further urged the justices to adopt a more flexible approach to legal standing so more people can challenge legislation concerning the public interest. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
