When Security Becomes a Pretext

 By Kusnandar & Co., Attorneys At Law – Jakarta, Indonesia

 

What makes this development particularly alarming is its asymmetry of power and accountability. Civilian law enforcement agencies, including the Attorney General’s Office, are bound—at least in principle—by procedural safeguards, judicial oversight, and public scrutiny. The military, by contrast, operates under a different command structure and logic, one historically oriented toward threat neutralization rather than rights protection. When these logics intersect without clear legal boundaries, the result is not enhanced security, but diluted accountability. Responsibility becomes diffused, oversight becomes ambiguous, and abuses—should they occur—become harder to trace and contest.

 

The constitutional problem is therefore structural, not incidental. Indonesia’s post-Reformasi legal framework deliberately separated military functions from civilian governance to prevent precisely this kind of mission creep. The involvement of TNI in civilian prosecutorial activities, however “limited” or “temporary” it is claimed to be, reintroduces a parallel authority that sits uneasily within a constitutional democracy. It signals a regression from rule of law toward rule by managed force, where legality is preserved in form while its democratic substance quietly withers.

 

Equally concerning is the precedent being set for future cases. If the Attorney General’s Office can justify military involvement on the basis of “security” without a declared emergency, what prevents other civilian agencies from invoking the same rationale? Anti-corruption investigations, environmental disputes, land conflicts, or electoral matters could all be framed as “high-risk” and thus deserving of military presence. Once this logic is accepted, the threshold for militarization steadily lowers, until extraordinary measures become administratively convenient rather than constitutionally exceptional.

 

This trajectory also undermines public trust in law enforcement itself. A prosecution process guarded by soldiers does not project strength; it projects institutional insecurity. It suggests that civilian law enforcement lacks either the authority or the confidence to carry out its mandate without the implicit threat of armed force. In the long run, this weakens—not strengthens—the legitimacy of the justice system, as citizens begin to associate law enforcement not with fairness and due process, but with intimidation and power imbalance.

There is also a broader political economy at play. Cases involving natural resources, extractive industries, and strategic assets are often entangled with elite interests. The deployment of military force in such contexts risks creating the perception—whether accurate or not—that the state is aligning coercive power with particular economic outcomes. Even the appearance of such alignment is corrosive. Democracy depends not only on actual impartiality, but on the public belief that the law is applied without fear or favor. Militarized optics shatter that belief.

 

Silence from other oversight institutions compounds the danger. When parliament, civil society, and legal associations fail to challenge these practices decisively, normalization accelerates. What is left unsaid becomes as important as what is officially declared. The absence of robust institutional pushback allows executive discretion to expand unchecked, gradually redrawing the boundaries of acceptable state behavior.

 

At its core, this is a test of democratic maturity. A confident democracy does not need soldiers to carry files, nor does it rely on semantic acrobatics to justify the presence of guns in civilian offices. It relies on institutions that trust one another, laws that are enforced transparently, and officials who understand that restraint—not force—is the true measure of state strength.

 

If Indonesia is to honor the spirit of Reformasi, it must resist the quiet re-entry of military logic into civilian governance. The question is no longer whether this particular action was “legal” under a narrow interpretation, but whether it is compatible with the democratic future Indonesia claims to defend. History shows that once the line between civilian authority and military power is blurred, restoring it is far more difficult than crossing it. And by then, the erosion is no longer quiet—it is complete.

K&Co. - January 14, 2026