The Dayak’s digital footprint was never included in the planning of the new capital. Doc. LN.

By Apai Tuai Desa

Indonesia’s dream of a futuristic capital in Borneo now stands on trial, its legal foundations shaken by constitutional challenges that refuse to be silenced. What was once sold as a national rebirth is increasingly exposed as a reckoning over land, power, and the rights of the people who have lived there for centuries.

Indonesia’s ambition to build a new capital city deep in the forests of Borneo was meant to symbolize national renewal: a modern, green, tech-driven metropolis called Nusantara that would ease Jakarta’s congestion and mark a new political chapter. 

Yet soon after legislators approved the Ibu Kota Negara (IKN) Law in early 2022, the project became the subject of a series of constitutional challenges before the nation’s highest court. What began as murmurs of criticism evolved into a legal saga involving activists, scholars, public figures, and community organizations seeking to question not only the city’s construction but the legal foundation enabling it.

Over the past three years, the Indonesian Constitutional Court (Mahkamah Konstitusi, MK) has sifted through waves of petitions — some rejected for procedural lapses, others accepted for full judicial review. 

The cases expose a contest over resources, democracy, indigenous rights, and the limits of executive ambition. They also reveal the evolving role of the court as it tries to balance administrative pragmatism with constitutional safeguards.

This report traces the rise and fate of those challenges, explains the Court’s reasoning, and analyzes the implications for a project that Indonesia hopes will define its next century.

The Spark: A New Capital, an Old Debate

The IKN Law was passed with unusual speed. In January 2022, after years of conceptual planning under President Joko Widodo, legislators approved the bill that formally authorized the relocation of Indonesia’s capital from the sinking city of Jakarta to the eastern part of Borneo. The chosen area — a mosaic of forest, mining sites, watersheds, and indigenous land — immediately drew attention.

The law established a new governance body, allocated strategic powers to the central government, and opened the door to long-term land concessions for investors. Supporters hailed IKN as an engine of future urban resilience. Critics insisted the process was rushed, thin on public consultation, and potentially damaging to the environment and local communities.

Within weeks, the first petitions arrived at the Constitutional Court.

The Petitioners: A Coalition of Dissent

The initial wave of challenges included a broad range of applicants: legal activists, academics, public intellectuals, former government officials, and private citizens. Among those publicly reported were individuals such as Busyro Muqoddas, a respected former head of Indonesia’s anti-corruption commission, and other civil society figures. Their arguments varied, but much of the early litigation focused on formal defects in the lawmaking process.

Some petitioners argued that the government had accelerated the legislative calendar beyond reason, leaving little room for public deliberation. Others questioned whether the law was debated comprehensively across parliamentary factions or whether impacted stakeholders — especially from Kalimantan — were properly consulted.

Within months, more petitions followed. Community organizations focused on environmental harm. Scholars challenged provisions on land governance. Indigenous rights advocates stressed the risks of displacement. The courtroom became a forum for grievances that had not found adequate space in the political process.

Formal Challenges Falter: The Court Draws a Hard Line

Despite public interest, the Constitutional Court quickly dismissed several of the earliest petitions. The reason was not political, but procedural.

Indonesia’s constitutional framework imposes strict deadlines on formal judicial review: claims alleging defects in the legislative process must be filed within 45 days of promulgation. Several applicants filed after the deadline. Others failed to demonstrate a sufficiently direct constitutional interest.

The Court, while acknowledging public debate over IKN, asserted that its procedural rules are non-negotiable. To accept late filings, it argued, would undermine legal certainty and destabilize the legislative system.

In decision after decision throughout 2022, the Court rejected petitions on procedural grounds. Yet the controversies surrounding the new capital did not dissipate. They merely shifted.

From Procedure to Substance: Material Review Takes Center Stage

By 2023, petitioners adapted their strategy. Instead of focusing on the legislative process, they targeted the substance of the IKN Law and its 2023 amendments — especially the articles governing land rights.

At the heart of the challenge was Article 16A, which allows the granting of land rights within the new capital — including Right of Use (HP), Right to Build (HGB), and Right to Cultivate (HGU). Critics claimed that these provisions allowed exceptionally long concession periods, potentially stacking initial terms, extensions, and renewals in a way that could grant investors effective control over land for nearly a century.

Petitioners argued that this contradicts Article 33 of the Constitution, which mandates that land and natural resources be controlled by the state for the greatest prosperity of the people. Excessively long concessions, they claimed, risked placing the public interest beneath the priorities of private capital.

The Court agreed to hear these arguments in full. Over several months, expert witnesses gave testimony, government lawyers defended the law’s design, and petitioners presented a constitutional critique of land governance at the frontier of Indonesian state-building.

A Turning Point: The Court Reinterprets Land Rights in IKN

In late 2025, the Constitutional Court issued a landmark decision. While the Court did not strike down the IKN Law, it reinterpreted crucial portions of Article 16A to ensure compliance with the Constitution.

The ruling placed explicit limits on how long land rights may be granted or extended in the new capital. Although the Court did not adopt the most restrictive proposals offered by petitioners, it rejected the possibility of overly long layered concessions and affirmed that the state must retain clear, active control over land use in IKN.

The decision had several consequences:

1. Investor Certainty Redefined

The ruling curtailed the possibility of ultra-long concession periods, forcing the government and potential investors to recalibrate their development models. While not hostile to investment, the Court asserted that constitutional principles — not market pressures — define the boundaries of land governance.

2. Indigenous and Local Rights Elevated

Although the ruling did not directly address land claims by indigenous Dayak communities, its emphasis on state oversight opens legal pathways for stronger recognition of community rights within the administrative framework of IKN. Several advocacy groups welcomed the decision as a judicial reminder that national development cannot override constitutional protections.

3. The Government’s Authority Checked, Not Broken

The Court did not undermine the capital relocation project. It affirmed the state’s authority to build IKN but warned that such authority carries constitutional limits. The executive remains free to proceed — but under a tighter legal interpretation.

Why the Court Opted for Interpretation, Not Annulment

Observers noted that the Court chose a middle path: constitutional reinterpretation rather than outright invalidation of the law. This approach reflects a pattern in Indonesian constitutional jurisprudence, where the Court often prefers “reading down” statutes rather than striking them entirely.

This serves two goals:

1. Maintaining legislative stability while correcting constitutional defects.

2. Preserving national projects deemed important for long-term state interests.

For IKN, outright annulment could have halted multi-billion-dollar development already underway. Instead, the Court opted for a remedy that preserves the project but constrains it within constitutional boundaries.

Where Formal Challenges Failed, Substantive Challenges Succeeded

The contrast between early and later petitions offers a lesson in constitutional strategy:

• Procedural challenges — many of which were popularly amplified — collapsed due to strict timing rules and insufficient legal standing.

• Substantive challenges — focused on tangible constitutional harms and specific norms — succeeded in forcing reinterpretation.

In effect, the Court’s message was clear: criticisms of political process have no legal weight if not filed on time, but well-argued constitutional objections to statutory content will be heard.

Beyond the Courtroom: What the Rulings Mean for Indonesia

1. A More Transparent Capital Project?

The rulings emphasize the state’s obligations to act transparently and proportionately in allocating land rights. Whether this translates to better on-the-ground governance in Kalimantan remains uncertain.

2. A Model for Future Megaproject Scrutiny

IKN is not the only mega-project in Indonesia. The Court’s approach sets a precedent: lawmakers must anticipate constitutional challenges when granting long-term land concessions, especially in areas with indigenous communities and sensitive ecosystems.

3. Indigenous Rights Still Waiting for Center Stage

While the rulings indirectly strengthen the position of Dayak and other local communities, major questions remain unresolved:
Who owns customary land within IKN’s boundaries?
How will compensation, resettlement, and cultural integrity be guaranteed?
These issues have not yet reached the same depth of judicial scrutiny.

4. The Political Clock Is Ticking

With a new administration in place, the IKN project faces shifting political winds. The Court’s decisions impose guardrails, but the ambition — and the risks — remain immense.

A Constitutional Project Made — and Unmade — in Court

Indonesia’s new capital is perhaps the most ambitious political undertaking since the country’s democratic transition. Yet the legal history of IKN shows that even grand visions must withstand constitutional testing.

The Constitutional Court did not stop IKN. But it reshaped its legal architecture, inserted guardrails into land governance, and reminded the government that development cannot outrun constitutional commitments.

In a sense, the capital city on Borneo now carries two foundations:
one of concrete and steel, and another — more fragile, more consequential — of constitutional principle.

The next phase of IKN’s development will test which foundation proves stronger.

---

References

Primary Legal Sources

1. Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia (Mahkamah Konstitusi), Official Decisions and Press Releases on Judicial Review of the IKN Law (2022–2025).

2. Law No. 3/2022 on the National Capital (IKN).

3. Law No. 21/2023 (Amendment to the IKN Law).

4. Constitutional Court decisions relating to Article 16A on land tenure in IKN.

Secondary Media Sources
5. Detik News reporting on early dismissals of formal challenges to the IKN Law (2022).
6. Tempo investigations and updates on judicial review developments.
7. Mongabay environmental reporting on indigenous and ecological concerns surrounding IKN.
8. IDN Times and MetroTV coverage of the Constitutional Court’s 2025 decision limiting long-term land rights.
9. JDIH (Official Legal Documentation Network) — full-text archives of legislation and Constitutional Court decisions.