The Urgency of Online Petition to Guarantee the Freedom of Speech and Participate Rights in Government

Abstract

The freedom to express ideas and participate in the government is often manifested through democratic voting or involvement in general elections. Still, the processes taking place in elections cannot fully ensure that the members of the public can get their rights to the freedom of speech and participation in the government. With doctrinal legal methods, this research has found that there seems to be an urgency to initiate an online petition platform in Indonesia as an alternative channel accessible to all the public members to optimise the exercise of the freedom of speech and equal participation in the government. Online petition systems have been around in Indonesia for quite some time, initiated and managed by change.org as a private organisation and other non-governmental organisations. Still, the legal loophole regarding online petitions that represent public participation in forming policies has not been capable of guaranteeing attention or responses from the government over particular issues. To gain more perspectives, this article compares the online petition systems in the US and South Korea initiated by presidential agencies and the online petition in Germany, which is under the direct management of the Petition Committee below the parliament (Bundestag). Therefore, it is concluded that the Indonesian president has the power to rule the government to respond to the urgency of giving protection and fulfilling human rights, especially freedom of speech and the right to participate in the government by setting the legal basis.