Hukumonline posted (in Bahasa) interesting articles on the emerging practice of citizen suit in Indonesia. So far the effort to get legal standing in a citizen suit has failed and the government has refused to acknowledge it as they are deemed to be an alien concept. However, the central jakarta court did finally decided to recognize plaintiffs legal standing, on the national exam case.

Citizen suit (wikipedia link) is used in anglo saxon legal system, mostly for environmental cases. Citizen can sue governmental insitutions both for their action which contravenes prevailing regulations or their omission in upholding or enacting regulation.

I want to see how this develop. This may go further to appeal and supreme court level. If the supreme court say 'yes' to citizen suit, civil socities (NGOs) in Indonesia will have a better position and ease in doing their job.

If you are interested in knowing how it works in US, here is a link to an SSRN paper.