Reconstructing the People's Consultative Assembly Through the Directive Principles for Pancasila Democracy Representation

Abstract

The decline of public trust in representative institutions and the fragmentation of political parties indicate an acute crisis of representation in Indonesia's post-reform constitutional democracy. This article aims to formulate a discourse on reconstructing the authority of the People's Consultative Assembly (Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat or MPR) through the institutionalization of the Broad Outlines of State Policy (Garis-Garis Besar Haluan Negara or GBHN) and the reintegration of Group Representation (Utusan Golongan) as a solution to developmental discontinuity and the alienation of functional aspirations. Utilizing normative legal research with a comparative approach to the Directive Principles of State Policy (DPSP) models in India and Ireland, this study establishes a reconstruction typology with facilitative, deliberative, and directive dimensions. The novelty of this research lies in two fundamental aspects: first, the "Indonesianization of GBHN" with a non-justiciable character, accompanied by a proposed safeguard clause in Article 7A of the 1945 Constitution to protect the presidential system from the risks of abusive constitutionalism. Second, the formulation of a meritocratic multi-stage bottom-up selection mechanism for Group Representation to dismantle the dominance of political oligarchies. Philosophically, this constitutional engineering is not merely a romanticization of past authoritarianism, but a concrete articulation of Pancasila Deliberative Democracy that transforms the MPR into a "National House", an inclusive national deliberative forum that unites political, territorial, and functional mandates in determining the nation's future direction.