In Defence of Professor Denny Indrayana’s Argument on the Basic Fitness of Public Officials
Introduction
In politics, a short sentence often outlives a thick legal treatise. When Joko Widodo (“Jokowi”) claimed that there was a political operation to damage the reputation of Gibran Rakabuming Raka, Professor Denny Indrayana answered with a single play on words: Gibran, he said, is not a “downgrade” but a “fail grade” *). The pun is the culmination of an argument he had been building for some time, and it deserves to be read as a sharpening of that argument rather than a mere verbal game [check out
here]. This essay sets out the strongest case that Denny’s defenders can make: that questions about the basic fitness of a public official cannot be equated with an attempt to bring that person down; that questions of education touch a legal requirement applying equally to every candidate; and that a complete answer to those questions is in fact simple and lies in the hands of the very party being questioned.
The essay is deliberately an advocacy piece. It presents the argument as Denny’s supporters would frame it and, in a closing note, records the views of those who disagree, so that readers can weigh the matter for themselves. The claims about educational history in this essay are the contentions of the petitioners and their supporters, or findings reported in the media; they are not a final judgement on the truth of that history.
The Logic Behind the Pun
The first strength of Denny’s argument lies in the logic of the word “down”. A person can be brought down only if he was previously at some height. If someone has never met the required standard, the question put to him is not “how far have you been pushed down?” but “did you meet the requirements in the first place?” That is the difference between a downgrade and a fail grade. The first points to a fall from a legitimate position; the second asks whether the starting point was ever legitimate. With one shift of vocabulary, Denny moves the debate from the terrain of image, where the party claiming to be under attack earns sympathy, to the terrain of qualification, where everyone who seeks public office must be able to show proof.
The audience, too, is well served. The public may not follow the details of a ruling on the age limit for candidates, but everyone understands what it means to pass, to fail, and to receive a failing mark. In political communication, the ability to translate a complicated constitutional problem into the language of a school report is a strength, not a weakness. Denny’s defenders can add that the academic vocabulary is apt because the matter raised is itself academic: what a person has and has not completed in his education.
Education Is No Trivial Matter: It Is a Legal Requirement
It is important to stress that Denny’s criticism does not rest on taste or prejudice. Under Article 169(r) of the Elections Law, candidates for president and vice-president must have completed at least senior secondary school or its equivalent. The requirement applies to every candidate without exception and therefore forms the same fence for everyone who wishes to enter the arena. Checking whether it has been met is not a personal attack; it is an inspection of an entrance guarded by the law. That entrance exists precisely because society does not want to judge a person’s basic fitness by sympathy or antipathy.
Denny’s defenders also emphasise that the question of fitness comes before the question of performance. Assessing the performance of an official is meaningful only if the office was obtained by a route that met the requirements. If the route is in doubt, turning the debate towards policy is like discussing the contents of a house before establishing who holds the key. That is why Denny deliberately attacks the foundations of legitimacy, not the drawing room of policy. The question is not whether Gibran has made mistakes as an official, but whether the requirements for becoming an official were met in the first place.
In the hearings at the Constitutional Court, Denny and the petitioners even stated that the matter was not solely one of education. In their view, five constitutional principles had been violated, and one of their main contentions concerned an alleged manipulative defect in the issuing of Article 18(3) of General Elections Commission (KPU) Regulation No. 19 of 2023, which governs the recognition of foreign education as equivalent. In other words, the educational record is only a doorway to a larger question: whether the rules of the game were shaped honestly.
The Documents That Exist and Those That Do Not
It is here that Denny’s argument gains its empirical weight. According to the petitioners, the documents submitted to show Gibran’s education abroad took the form of a certificate of attendance, academic records and an explanation of grades, rather than a diploma, a certificate of completion or a degree. Denny says that what exists is a certificate of attendance and a transcript at the level of a one-year diploma, and that the hearings included discussion of a subject recorded as failed. From this arises the concentrated question he poses: how many subjects were failed, and was that failure the reason the diploma programme was not completed?
Constitutional Court Decision No. 01/PHPU.PRES-XXIV/2026 gives Denny’s defenders further footing. According to media reports, the Court did declare the petition inadmissible because the petitioners were judged to lack legal standing. In its reasoning, however, after studying all the evidence and the facts revealed in the hearings, the Court stated that it had found no document showing that Gibran holds a diploma, certificate or degree as proof of completing education abroad equivalent to senior secondary school, because the documents attached were a certificate of attendance and academic records. For Denny’s supporters, that reasoning is no small matter. It is a statement by the competent institution that reinforces the starting point of Denny’s question, even though the operative ruling stopped at the issue of standing. It is for this reason that Denny’s lawyer, Refly Harun, proposed the creation of an independent team to look into the educational background.
Denny’s supporters also draw attention to what they describe as oddities in the equivalence letter issued by the government in 2019. According to Refly, what ought to be recognised as equivalent is a diploma, certificate or degree, not a person’s ability, since ability is relative and hard to measure. He also asked why the letter mentions only Grade 12 in 2006, and others have pointed to the absence of verifiable documents from educational institutions in Australia. Oddities of this kind, the defenders say, naturally give rise to questions, and reasonable questions should be answered with documents, not with suspicion of the questioner.
Denny himself shows that he first tried the most courteous route. He says he wrote to the schools and related institutions in Singapore and Australia asking for proof of the validity of the education, and the answer he received from the institution in Australia, three times in a row, was that the information could not be disclosed because it is protected by privacy law. He then launched an open challenge to anyone able to produce Gibran’s senior secondary school diploma or equivalent, with a reward that, by his announcement, had risen above Rp3.6 billion. A challenge of this kind can be made only by someone who is confident of his question and prepared to lose should the answer prove satisfactory. The challenge asks for nothing but one thing: show the document.
A Simple Answer, and a Clear Keeper of the Key
This is what makes Denny’s position morally distinctive. He does not ask anyone to trust him; he asks the owner of the documents to produce them. In the law of evidence, the party who holds the proof and can readily provide it bears the burden of showing it. A single diploma, a full transcript or one official letter from the institution concerned would be enough to end the question. If there is no obstacle, there is no reason for delay. A senior state official plainly has a greater capacity than an ordinary citizen to gather such documents, and it is only fitting that what is open to inspection should be the most basic requirement of the office he holds.
Denny’s defenders point out that transparency in this matter is not merely a legal question but also one of the ethics of office. An official whose position is questioned over a basic document takes the most dignified path by answering with evidence rather than by describing the questioner as an attacker. Public trust, like reputation, is not lowered by others; it is built or eroded by one’s attitude towards legitimate questions.
Why This Is Not a Personal Attack
Defenders of Gibran may say that this criticism is too personal. Denny’s supporters reply that the vice-presidency is an office whose fitness is properly judged in the person who holds it, since the requirements for candidacy are addressed to individuals. Age, citizenship, health and education are all personal attributes regulated by law. Questioning one of them is no more personal than asking whether a candidate meets the requirements of age or citizenship. What is personal is not the question but the fact that the requirement attaches to the person.
Moreover, Denny does not stop at one individual. He links education with the whole story of how the road to power was opened: the Constitutional Court’s ruling on the age limit that cleared Gibran’s path; the chief justice, who was Gibran’s uncle and was later given a serious ethical sanction; and the ethical sanctions imposed on the election administrators. On this reading, the educational record is one knot in a wider net, and it must be examined because the other knots around it have already raised serious questions.
This sequence also accords with Denny’s criticism of volunteer politics and the personalisation of power. If office can be reached through networks, closeness and rules that adjust themselves, then the question of basic requirements becomes the last fence capable of distinguishing between an office obtained because the requirements were met and one obtained because of access. There the pun “fail grade” finds its deepest meaning: not merely a matter of a person’s marks, but of the failure of a system to guard its entrance.
An Allegory: The Examination at the Palace
Some ideas are easier to grasp through stories. The allegory that follows names no one and is meant as a way of picturing the argument above. In a certain kingdom, the crown prince is suddenly announced as the candidate to captain the largest ship in the land. The people ask whether he has passed navigation school, and the guards ask in return why they are so busy inspecting his report card. The people answer that it is because the ship is about to be handed to him. The guards then cry out that the people are trying to destroy his reputation.
An old teacher sweeping the quay laughs softly. How, he asks, can a man be brought down from the bell tower if he has never climbed it? The question the people are asking, he says, is not how far he has fallen, but whether he ever climbed at all. So the whole country becomes busy debating report cards. Yet history is quietly asking a different question: who checked the fitness of the would-be captain before he was given the helm? In politics, examination marks are often not the greatest problem. The greatest problem is who grants access to the examination room, who sets the conditions for passing, and who ends up sitting on the ship’s bridge.
A Dignified Way Out
Denny’s argument does not end with criticism. He offers a way out that can be taken calmly. The first is openness: producing verifiable educational documents, whether through the independent inquiry proposed by Refly Harun or through an official statement from the institution concerned, so that the question can be closed with evidence. The second is political repentance: if the basic question is not answered satisfactorily, resigning honourably is more dignified than clinging to office amid continuing doubt. The third is the constitutional route under Article 7A of the 1945 Constitution, which involves the House of Representatives, the Constitutional Court and the People’s Consultative Assembly, so that every step remains under the shelter of the law. Denny also reminds President Prabowo that political indebtedness should not be a reason to preserve the status quo, since the oath of office is sworn to the constitution, not to a person.
Conclusion
On the reading of its defenders, the strength of Denny’s argument lies in its simplicity. He does not ask anyone to believe a complicated theory. He asks only a question that everybody can understand: have the basic requirements been met, and where is the proof? The question has been put openly, through the courtroom, official letters and a public challenge, and it rests on the reasoning of a competent institution that the documents submitted were not a diploma, certificate or degree. The pun “not a downgrade, but a fail grade” is an apt summary of the whole stance: what is in question is not how far someone has fallen, but whether he stood from the start where he ought to have stood.
Meanwhile, history sits quietly in the distance, neither cheering nor applauding. It will record only whether a question this simple was answered with evidence or with accusation. In a democracy, public trust in the highest offices is built not by loud words but by a willingness to be examined.
Note:
*) "Fail Grade" is not standard English grammar (less idiomatic), but it is easily understood as a political slogan. It plays with a similar sound:
downgrade → fail grade
Rhetorically, it is impressive because it is short and easy to remember. Native speakers will usually consider this phrase to be a play on words, not a proper academic expression.
