House targets seen as unrealistic

The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Thu, 06/15/2006 1:08 PM

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Members of the House of Representatives are being criticized for doing what many politicians do -- making promises they can't keep.

Activists from the Forum of Citizens Concerned about the Indonesian Legislature (Formappi) and the Center for Indonesian Law and Policy Studies (PSHK) said rather than aiming to pass a large number of bills during their tenure, House members should focus on deliberating laws of high quality.

""House members have tried so hard to prove they are useful by trying to pass as many laws as possible, but we always see that by the end of any session, the result is nothing,"" Sebastian Salang of Formappi told The Jakarta Post.

House Speaker Agung Laksono has said that during the House session from May to July this year, lawmakers were expected to finish deliberating 29 bills. He said to expedite the deliberations, the House would devote 60 percent of its working time to discussing drafts of bills.

Agung has promised to get large numbers of laws deliberated in a single session many times before, however, and that pledge has never been fulfilled. As a result the House now faces a large backlog of bills.

To help members deliberate bills effectively, the House leadership commissioned the House secretariat to draw up a more workable schedule.

For the current session, the House secretariat has assigned Mondays and Tuesdays for members to work in their designated commissions, and Wednesdays and Thursdays to deliberate bills.

The House has also set up a special team to improve its members' performance.

A new schedule, however, will make little difference to the output of House members, Bivitri Susanti of PSHK told the Post.

""In spite of the new schedule, the prospect of the House being able to pass a large number of bills is dismal, since in most cases, one House member has take part in discussions of five bills on a daily basis,"" Bivitri said.

Instead of putting too much weight on quantity, it's high time House members focused on the quality of the laws they are trying to produce, she suggested.

""Because of the unnecessary target, House members have forgotten to come up with good laws. As a result most of them have been unfeasible,"" she said.

PSHK found that of 14 laws passed in 2005, only two were of good quality: the Law on Sports and the Law on Teachers.

Lawmaker Eva Kusuma Sundari of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) admitted institutional constraints had prevented members from working as effectively as possible.

""We have committed to an internal reform that involves the House's working bodies, the secretariat general, and political factions,"" she said.

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