Constitutional Complaint, Human Rights, and Protection of Right to Freedom of Religion and Belief in Indonesia

Indonesia as a democratic state of law as mandated by Article 1 paragraph 3 of 1945 Indonesian Constitution is regarded as a political construction of the law of the state idealized to bring justice, welfare, and prosperity to society, to the state. Based on this principle, the existence of living constitution should serve as a basis for the construction of national legal system to respond to varied dynamics of state administration either at national level or globally. The responsiveness has contributed paradigmatic thought about the protection of the constitutional rights to the domain of legal studies and practices of state administration through the mechanism of constitutional complaint intended to guarantee the enforcement of constitutional supremacy and to respond to the progress of law in the society in regard to the right to freedom of religion and belief. This is aimed to provide legal facilities for justice seekers over the practices of anarchism, intolerance, and discrimination that paralyse or even kill the justice per se (justice denied). This article is intended to elaborate the importance of constitutional complaint to fulfil the right to religion and belief in Indonesia. The idea of constitutional complaint within the scope of idea and implementation has become the part of constitutional review mechanism that is in fact not restricted to the review of abstract norm, but it also involves the element of concrete legal conduct that may arise from negligence in state administration in terms of interpreting legislation. Such negligence has a consequence on policies and violates the constitutional rights of the people. Therefore, the idea of constitutional complaint as an attempt to enforce the constitutional supremacy has to be implemented to set free the idea of protecting and guaranteeing human rights that has been long trapped in the realm of utopia.