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A Comparative Analysis of the Impeachment Procedures in Nigeria and Indonesia: A Need for a Paradigm Change
Get PDFAlthough impeachment as the outcome of constitutionalism is significant in good governance, narrow political affiliations, institutional corruption, and the absence of democratic tenets among politicians hamper its proper application in Nigeria and Indonesia. The impeachment in both countries reveals a weaponization of the process for parochial gains and there is a penchant for using the process to remove elected officials for personal and political reasons. This study comparatively analyzes the impeachment procedures in Nigeria and Indonesia to suggest measures to strengthen and safeguard the procedures from abuse. The methodology deployed in this study is essentially a desk review of both primary and secondary materials. Given the comparative analysis of the commonalities and variant impeachment procedures in Nigeria and Indonesia, the application of the constitutional provisions for impeachment in both countries remains fraught with neo-patrimonialism and narrow party considerations, exacerbated by corruption, selfish interests, and ulterior motives to be in power endlessly. Moreover, wieldy impeachment provisions and weak institutional regimes propagate the abuse of impeachment. Hence, public participation in the impeachment process, amendment of the impeachment provisions, appointment of judges by independent bodies, and the prosecution of corrupt politicians and judges by effectively implementing extant anti-corruption laws are some of the steps to suppress the abuse of impeachment in Nigeria and Indonesia. While these measures are vigorously implemented, the abuse of the impeachment procedures will be repressed.
Keywords: Constitutionalism, Impeachment Procedures, Indonesia, Nigeria
Populist Constitutionalism in Brazil and Peru: Historical and Contextual Issues
Get PDFGiven populism's common practice in South America, the region provides a crucial case to identify populism as a prevalent strategy by different ideologies. The link between populism and constitutionalism is paramount because populist governments typically use constituent power and constitutional identity to reach political goals. This study aimed to provide a comparative constitutional analysis of the recent development of populism in Brazil and Peru. The first was the rhetoric and practices of Jair Bolsonaro's government in Brazil, whereas the second was Pedro Castillo's government in Peru regarding constitutional reforms and human rights issues. This comparison justified that Brazil and Peru are presidential republics where harsh political polarization shakes their societies. Bolsonaro and Castillo have anti-corruption discourses and support a new constituent process but present antagonistic economic views. This study was comparative in nature that used a qualitative approach, sourced from bibliographic and documentary research that included specialized literature on South American populism and constitutionalism and the government's plans and legislation. This study showed that both governments have difficulties executing their respective agendas on customs and constituent referendums due to governability problems and important features of the constitutional design, such as eternity clauses, judicial review, and constitutional rigidity. It concluded that the populist strategies of Bolsonaro and Castillo are different. Bolsonarism is antiliberal and promotes human rights regression, whereas Castillo's populism is conservative but democratic. In common, both face the coalitional presidentialism and constitutional protection mechanisms as constraints to putting their political goals entirely into practice.
Keywords: Authoritarianism, Constitutionalism, Fundamental Rights, Populism
ASEAN Integration in the Context of Disaster Management
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic, a globally unprecedented disease outbreak, has alarmed all governments to reconsider the importance of disaster management policies at the domestic level. At the same time, handling transboundary disasters was another challenge faced by regional organizations such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). As a result of this pandemic, all member states tended to act more independently by closing their territories and isolating their citizens from cross-border migration. This paper aimed to examine ASEAN's existing measures to address the COVID-19 pandemic, following the importance of considering domestic policies taken by its member states to portray the possible action at the regional level. In practice, each ASEAN member state had various approaches, from strict lockdowns such as those implemented in Singapore to Indonesian policies that were far from being prepared. While COVID-19 is a non-natural disaster but has had a devastating impact on Southeast Asia, the future of regional integration is at stake. This paper showed that each member state's different social, economic, and political situations influenced the absence of early common practices at the domestic level to overcome this pandemic. Simultaneously, market stability in Southeast Asia was the key to regional development, whereas this pandemic harmed ASEAN's aim to meet economic integration. This paper suggested that ASEAN should establish guidelines regarding disaster management as experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic for member states' domestic policies to anticipate possible adverse episodes in the future that may hamper the integration progress.Keywords: ASEAN Integration, COVID-19, Disaster Management
Power Sharing and Zoning Formula for Managing Nigeria's Diversity: A Case of the Fourth Republic
Get PDFNigeria is composed of plural and multi-complex societies with multiple ethnic groups of up to 500 cultural diversities. This country surmounts the obstacles of managing diversity through an informal setting popularly identified as a zoning formula and power sharing among the federating units. The pattern and trend in which the practice maintains Nigeria's diversity is a good lesson for a study of plural societies and consociationalism. The study aimed to examine the nature and dimension of zoning formula and power sharing in Nigeria and analyze how the strategies of zoning formula and power sharing helped manage diversity in Nigeria. The study was identified as a descriptive qualitative method that sought to describe Nigeria's strategy for managing diversity. The study uncovered that power sharing and zoning consist of constitutional and unconstitutional ones, with the former supported by legal provisions. Simultaneously, the latter is designed based on principles and gentleman agreements. The study recommended that constitutional provisions should never be sacrificed on the altar of the personal elite agreement. Instead, sharing power through zoning should be retained to prevent suicide for credibility and competency. It is a plausible shock absorber that will continue to sustain Nigerian federalism, and other plural societies can borrow this model as a political means of resolving diversities.Keywords: Consociationalism, Constitution, Nigeria
The Limits of Indonesia’s Legal Framework for Electromobility: Regulatory and Sustainable Issues
Get PDFThe rise in global temperature indicates the impact of climate change, encouraging more countries to adapt and seek practical solutions. Several countries, including Indonesia, have begun to regulate electric vehicles because of the commitment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. It simultaneously provides opportunities for developing electric vehicles to prevent more use of fossil fuels. This study aimed to discuss and explore Indonesia's trajectory to develop a legal framework for electromobility that started to be drafted in 2019. This framework has resulted in legal fissures because of the lack of regulations to promote electric vehicles against the environmental aspects, whereas it tends to focus on industrial development. Finally, this study discussed regulatory issues and predicted the future of Indonesia's electromobility legal development through the lens of sustainability. This study used normative legal research whose analysis inventoried and identified several laws and regulations on electromobility in Indonesia with particular criteria. This study showed that Indonesia's legal development of electromobility is being accomplished by autonomous and inconsistent delegated regulations with technical and non-technology aspects. Adopting a legal instrument through Presidential Regulation is insufficient to build an electromobility ecosystem that involves many sectors. In contrast, an imbalance in the regulatory framework, the three pillars of sustainability, and the economic dimension outweigh the social and environmental factors. Insofar, the regulations adopted prioritize the economic aspect, and the framework has impacted other industries, including mining and international trade, due to the need for nickel and manganese as raw materials for electric vehicle batteries.Keywords: Electromobility, Indonesia, Legal Framework, Sustainability
Elimination of Child Labor in Vietnam's New Generation of Free Trade Agreements
Get PDFAs of March 2021, Vietnam negotiated and signed the new generation of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), consisting of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the European-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), and the Vietnam-Eurasian Economic Union Free Trade Agreement (VN-EAEU FTA). One of the critical issues of these agreements is non-commercial provisions, especially commitments to the elimination of child labor. This study aimed to examine the implementation of the commitment to eliminate child labor in the new generation of FTAs under the principle of pacta sunt servanda and the government's responsibility to comply with international treaties according to the 2013 Constitution. Based on the obligations arising from international treaties, Vietnam must comply with all commitments agreed upon as a state member. As a result, it is necessary to implement suitable solutions to implement these commitments properly, especially the elimination of child labor, according to the three mentioned FTAs. By using comparative and evaluated methods, this study analyzed and commented on the similarities and differences between the Vietnam labor legal system and these three agreements on eliminating child labor. This study indicated relative compatibility between regulations in three FTAs and the Vietnamese legal system. Subsequently, there is a need to improve the effective implementation of these commitments by amending the definition of children, working hours, and classifying violations against the law regarding the employment of workers under 16 years old of coercive labor into the group of crimes and criminal liabilities to commercial legal entities.
Keywords: Child Labor, Free Trade Agreements, Vietnam
Recognition of Forest Carbon Rights in Indonesia: A Constitutional Approach
Get PDFAs a forest-rich nation, Indonesia has actively participated in carbon market governance like the REDD+ program. With the rapid expansion of REDD+ to address the effects of climate change, questions surrounding carbon rights have surfaced. This study aims to analyze the regulatory development of carbon rights in Indonesia and its impact on the community rights over forest resources by elaborating on the ideal carbon rights governance under a constitutional perspective. The study uses the normative method, which includes pertinent rules and supporting statements from climate change specialists. This study shows that carbon rights are defined broadly as the right to participate in forest carbon trading, although they require a government permit. There is no clear explanation of the relationship between land tenure and carbon ownership under the existing legislation, despite four permits to acquire carbon benefits: environmental service, social forestry, ecosystem restoration, and forest carbon administration permit. While the state can claim state control rights on certain commodities like carbon under Article 33 of the Indonesian Constitution, it also has to manage the distribution of carbon incentives based on the public interest. By facilitating the transfer of carbon rights under a carbon trading scheme while highlighting the government's role in sharing the benefits of carbon via a result-based payment scheme, Presidential Regulation 98/2021 contributes to more explicit control of carbon rights. All concerns related to carbon rights governance in Indonesia include complicated administrative and technical requirements for applying for a license, insecure land tenure due to overlapping claims, and unlawful encroachment in forest regions. Since land tenure issues remain unresolved, recognizing carbon rights as an alternative to recognizing marginal and community rights to forest resources could be viable.
KEYWORDS: Environmental Regulation, Forest Carbon Rights, REDD+
Peacebuilding as a New Form of Colonialism: A Case Study of Liberia and Sierra Leone
Get PDFAround two decades ago, legal anthropologist Merry posed the question, "what can we learn about law and globalization today from revisiting the law and colonization literature?" She emphasized how colonial arrangements transformed and affected the fundamental character of contemporary and international law. While peacebuilders, development experts, and human rights activists embrace law as a tool for social change, others have looked back on the history of legal development in the Global South to warn that the rule of law served as a framework for social control. It preserved authority and punished rebellious acts that threatened order while promoting development and social progress. As a result of this reminder, the critical peacebuilding literature has begun to pay attention to how the rule of law and transitional justice frameworks may serve as conceptual, lexical, and discursive foundations for post/neo-colonial control. This article used a historical, empirical, and comparative study of post-war Sierra Leone and Liberia to argue that the transplantation of legal norms and technologies has become more professionalized. In contrast, international efforts to rebuild the rule of law have reinforced social domination by legitimizing external actors as peacebuilders and reconstituting the relationship between the domestic political class and global capital. Social domination refers to the attempt to build an unequal playing field, wherein the country's political and economic elites can leverage and reproduce earlier forms of power relations and domination to consolidate their security within the state apparatus and benefit disproportionately from the security created by a large external presence.Keywords: Liberia, Neo-colonialism, Peacebuilding, Sierra Leone
Child Labor and Poverty Reduction in Vietnam: Issues and Policy Implications
Get PDFThere is a relationship between child labor and poverty. The unaffordable financial state of households is the main reason to force children to become workers at an early age. One of the main points to respond to eliminating and preventing child labor is how to reduce poverty. Accordingly, many legal tools are designed and applied, such as forming regulations in finance supports and vocational training programs. This study provided practical evidence on the link between child labor and poverty in Vietnam as well as analysis on which legal measures the Vietnamese Government has done to tackle child labor based on the poverty approach. It was followed by some recommendations to eliminate child labor, especially in the context that negative impacts of COVID-19 pandemic push children to fall into poverty again and force them to continue to work in early-stage in most countries, including Vietnam. The study used a qualitative approach, including on desk review and a second-date analysis on regulations on child labor and poverty reduction policies in Vietnam. This study found that there existed a gap between policies on poverty to reduce child labor and practices. Comprehensive approaches in making policies, as well as law enforcement, are the core reasons. The gap should be overcome by providing unified action plans with an effective governmental authority system.
KEYWORDS: Child Labor, Children Rights, Poverty Reduction
Trash Trade and Environmental Regulations: An Assessment
Get PDFFollowing China's decision to ban trash import in 2018, some countries in Southeast Asia are at the forefront of banning and imposing stringent measures to crackdown trash trade. The new trend in trash trade regulations had further impacted weaker countries and made a haven for dumping waste unless they adopt a uniform mechanism to regulate or completely ban trash trade within the region. This study aimed to analyze the recent response of some developing countries to the trash trade and how likely this response impact other countries in the same region, by taking into account the impact of the trash trade on the environment and health and waste handling capacity. This study adopted doctrinal analysis that combined descriptive and analytical approaches to analyze trash trade and regulation impacts in developing countries and arrived at a need for a holistic approach and national waste management policy to encourage the recycling industry in trash receiving states. This study found that although developing countries had a perfect set of rules and norms regarding sustainable waste management and protecting illicit trash trade, most of them had shortages due to internal and external factors. Solid waste management in developing and least developed countries was a never-ending problem due to the low technological requirements and economic investments.
KEYWORDS: Trash Trade, Developing Countries, Environmental Justice