Warga Mimpikan Hak Petisi: Banyak Negara Sudah Memperhatikan [Citizens Dream of the Right of Petition: Many Countries Already Pay Attention to It]

Abstract

A Kompas daily news report on president-elect Joko Widodo's idea of e-blusukan, an information technology system to replace blusukan (impromptu field visits), and on the importance of guaranteeing citizens' right of petition so that digital channels for public aspirations are not in vain. Eryanto Nugroho, Executive Director of the Pusat Studi Hukum dan Kebijakan (Indonesian Centre for Law and Policy Studies), traces the right of petition from the Magna Charta to Article 44 of Law Number 39 of 1999 on Human Rights, which still requires a presidential regulation. Dian Abraham of the Masyarakat Antinuklir Indonesia (Indonesian Anti-Nuclear Society) draws a comparison with Japan, while Resa Temaputra and John Muhammad of the Public Virtue Institute describe South Korea's e-people system, the British parliamentary petition mechanism (100,000 signatures), and the We The People channel of Barack Obama's administration in the United States. The report records public hopes for participatory governance at the beginning of the Jokowi era.