Understanding the State Policy Guidelines

KOMPAS/RADITYA HELABUMI

Yudi Latif

The discourse on reinstating the State Policy Guidelines (GBHN) has reemerged to cause widespread controversy. Debates have ensued around the vague understanding of the term “guideline”. People interpret this term as they like without any attempt to dig into the term’s original meaning as intended by our founding fathers.Prior to the Constitutional amendment, Article 3 of the 1945 Constitution stipulated: “The People’s Consultative Assembly [MPR] establishes the Constitution and the State Policy Guidelines”. Therefore, “State Policy Guideline” is defined as different than the Constitution. It must also be contrasted from laws, as lawmaking does not fall under the authority of the MPR, but instead under the authority of the President and the House of Representatives (DPR).

In the minds of our founding fathers, the efforts to achieve Indonesia’s national goals as stipulated in the Preamble of the 1945 Constitution must be based on three fundamental consensus: Pancasila as the basic ideology, the Constitution as the legal norm and the GBHN as the fundamental policy.