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group of activists questioned the House of Representatives over an article in a bill, which they said popped up unexpectedly, that would favor businesspeople at the expense of small-scale fishermen.

Questions were raised after the government and legislators declined to review an article awarding business entities (HP3) the rights to manage particular coastal areas and islets for 60 years.

“Since the public consultation on the draft in 2000, we have never seen an article about the HP3. The item appeared out of the blue after the legislators endorsed the bill,” the secretary-general of the People’s Coalition for Justice in Fishery (Kiara), Riza Damanik, told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

“We believe certain businesspeople intervened in the legislative process as the House was set to pass the bill,” he said.

Kiara’s allegations of a tainted legislative process are not the first. Last year, anti-tobacco activists protested over a missing clause in Article 113 of the Health Law. When passed, the article had three clauses, but when the law was submitted for approval to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, one clause classifying cigarettes as addictive was missing.

Andalas University legal expert Saldi Isra said public dissatisfaction with the laws passed was a reflection of poor legislation.

“The demands for judicial reviews are an easy indicator to test the quality of the legislative process at the House,” he told the Post, adding that experts in the legislative committee at the House should be at the forefront of quality control for academic papers and draft bills.

“The problem is that many draft bills from the legislative committee are changed during discussions at the House,” Saldi said.

The draft bills from the legislative committee are submitted to the House committee for deliberations with other stakeholders before being voted on in a plenary session.

To make matters worse, Saldi said, some laws passed by the House were not in line with previous academic papers, leading to poor quality.

He said the House should give more room to the public to take part in discussions to minimize demands for judicial reviews.

“The substance in approved bills should not deviate much from the academic papers. The discussion must stick to the paper,” he said.

The 560 legislators at the House are assisted by one specialist each while the national legislation body employs some 20. There are 11 commissions at the House, which aimed to endorse 70 bills this year.

To date, legislators have passed 20 bills into law since they taking office on Oct. 1, but none of the bills were part of the 70 draft laws listed as priorities in the national legislation program.

Legislative committee head Ignatius Mulyono said the House received 500 draft bills: 154 from the government, 116 from the House commissions, 136 from the parties in the House and 108 from the Regional Representatives Council.

“After screening, we decided to pass 247 bills into law by 2014,” he said, predicting that the House could pass 35 laws this year.

“The remaining target would be fulfilled between January and June 2011. At the same time, we will draw up academic papers on the new bills to be endorsed between July and December [this year],” he said.

Draft bills can be submitted by the government, legislators, the Council or NGOs.