What we are left with, then, is a part of the Constitution—the highest law of the land—that no government has any intention of obeying. To those who believe that respect for the law is one of the most fundamental ingredients of a properly functioning democracy, this is a very worrying state of affairs.

The lesson that needs to be learned from this, perhaps, is that the Constitution is not the appropriate place to set out aspects of government economic policy in fine detail. It should be left to elected governments to determine the extent to which they involve themselves (and taxpayers) in promoting education, and the nature of such involvement. This should not be a matter of law, but of responding to the wishes of the electorate.

More generally, it is time legislators accepted the reality that it is futile to pass a law that, for practical reasons, cannot be enforced. There are many elements in the Constitution that come in this category. Who will be held to account, for example, if an Indonesian citizen misses out on his or her constitutionally guaranteed “right” to social security? The time is well overdue for a thoroughgoing review of the Constitution, directed, among other things, to weeding out such elements—or at least to express them as desirable objectives rather than “rights”.

Much more likely, the same teachers will ask the Constitutional Court to rule on the validity of next year’s budget—because it is a virtual certainty that education spending will again fall well short of the 20% minimum.