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House leaves many crucial bills unfinished
The House of Representatives has once again upheld its poor record for legislation performance, ending its 45-day sitting period on Tuesday with just three bills having been passed into law
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The House of Representatives has once again upheld its poor record for legislation performance, ending its 45-day sitting period on Tuesday with just three bills having been passed into law.
The three laws deal with the trafficking of women and children, taxes and the ratification of the UN convention against transnational organized crime.
The high number of lawmakers absent from almost all deliberation sessions was to blame for this outcome, with higher salaries failing to produce better results overall.
Every legislator receives between Rp 90 million and Rp 100 million in monthly pay after tax, which includes salary and allowance.
"The salaries and allowances of House members should be cut off if they continue to perform poorly, like what we have seen today," constitutional law expert Irman Putra Sidin told The Jakarta Post.
"They still receive pay from the state without properly carrying out their jobs," he added.
Tuesday's plenary session was attended by less than 100 of the 550 House members.
However, the meeting was declared as having met a quorum, or the minimum number of lawmakers required to conduct discussion, because more than 300 legislators filled in their attendance sheets before the session had commenced.
Most then left as the meeting got underway.
House Speaker Agung Laksono reprimanded legislators attending the last plenary session before the April 9 legislative elections for leaving such a large amount of unfinished business on the House agenda.
The session saw discussions take place on the 35 priority bills still waiting deliberation.
“We only finished deliberating three drafts during this sitting period,” Agung told the meeting.
He said the House had many priority bills waiting to be deliberated and passed including the military court bill, the health services bill, the population bill, the narcotics bill, the immigration bill and the public services bill.
He also said that some of those bills, despite being discussed in the previous sitting period, were still incomplete drafts requiring further debate.
Agung said those bills would be deliberated in the next House sitting session after their recess for the legislative election.
A bill of particular importance is the corruption court draft law, which must be passed before the current corruption court ends control in December 2009.
The corruption court is the only court of its kind where prosecutors from the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) bring the accused to trial.
Based on a 2007 Constitutional Court decision, a new law on corruption courts must be enacted by the end of December 2009 or the existing court will be dissolved.
Agung expressed concern over this situation, considering the bill was crucial to curbing corruption in the country.
He said the Constitutional Court only allowed the House a short time to deliberate the bill and legislators were still trying to consider input from various organizations and individuals.
“The legislators have held meetings and discussed the corruption court bill with government representatives, such as the justice minister and the state minister for administrative reforms,” he said.
“Many people want the bill endorsed before December, and we promise that this will be done by Dec. 19,” he said
“If we fail to pass this bill on time, corruption cases may have to be processed in the state courts again, which would understandably disappoint the public.” (naf)
