"I am convinced that our ancestors did actually have theories and sciences, even though one has labelled them a form of black magic or mystical art." Suharto, the Second President of the Republic of Indonesia.Rather than producing a new liberal democracy, the sudden democratizing process that started in 1998 has only produced a mere electoral democracy. Based on this assumption, this article examines the impacts of preserving the Five Principles, or better known as Pancasila, which I consider as some form of exceptionalism (national self-righteousness) with respect to the politics of constitutionalism and the concept of human rights in Indonesia. In this case, the Indonesian version of exceptionalism has unwittingly legitimized some fundamental deviations as Indonesia proceeds to “electoralize” its public life. To make matters worse, this delusion has also prompted the process of building a democracy to drift from one ad hoc response to another that eventually hurts the very objective of reformasi itself, especially with respect to the of the rule of law and the protection of fundamental civil and political rights that are prerequisites for realizing liberal constitutionalism.