Imagined Constitutions

This chapter examines the relationship between formal constitutional amendment and the constitutional identity of a nation. During the constitutional reforms of the late 90s and early 2000s, the members of the People’s Consultative Assembly chose the amendment path rather than drafting an entirely new constitution. Relying on the theory of constitutional dismemberment, this chapter argues that the constitutional reform from 1999 to 2002 was essentially a constitutional dismemberment rather than an ordinary amendment process, as it involved a momentous constitutional change that entailed deconstructing and reconstructing the essential features of a constitution. On the one hand, constitutional dismemberment has produced a mere rule of law constitution that contains formal and substantive elements of the rule of law. But the constitutional dismemberment has not succeeded in establishing a new constitutional identity. Instead, it has resulted in various mis-identities—false assertions that certain past constitutional values are more genuine. Additionally, this dismemberment preserves the old constitutional identity, which retains key elements of the authoritarian constitution.