During the hearing, several members of the commission that oversees financial affairs questioned Agus’ “lack of knowledge” of his own regulation on the organization and administration of the tax watchdog.

The legislators are of the opinion that the committee was assigned only to oversee taxes, not including customs and excises as it did at present.

“The aim of the formation of the committee is to supervise taxation, therefore the position is supposedly only to watch the works of the taxation directorate general, not customs and excise directorate general,” said Melchias Markus Mekeng of the Golkar Party, saying that the watchdog has been overreaching due to its large scope of work.

Agus, however, said that the regulation is part of the ministry’s effort to eradicate deviations in taxation, including customs and excise. “With the regulation, an attempt to smuggle two containers of BlackBerry devices was successfully thwarted.”

In January this year, the taxation watchdog seized two containers at Tanjung Priok Port. The containers belonged to Anugrah Karya Utama which is owned by A Pau Yanto who is closely related to House members, Tempo magazine reported.

“If we revoke the regulation, what would the people say? If I was told to stop the implementation of the regulation, I would say I disagree,” the minister firmly told the commission XI members after being questioned for about four hours.

Following a series of debates, Harry Azhar Azis, the deputy chairman of the commission who led the meeting, concluded that the regulation would be reviewed altogether and the results discussed in another meeting scheduled for next Monday.

After the Golkar lawmaker tapped the gavel signaling that the decision was final, the raised voices of Golkar’s Nusron Wahid and Edison Betaubun, as well as Arif Budimanta of the Democratic Party of Struggle protested, interrupting the finance minister’s final remarks.

Agus, however, still hoped that a policy with good intentions could be appreciated by Commission XI as a group. “Because there’s one or two people who are up front, don’t just stay quiet as if they are right,” Agus slammed about 30 members of the commission who attended the meeting.

 “A decision has been made in this session. The leader has tapped the gavel. Now you want to rush the regulation to be revoked. If you’re wise, you would follow what’s been agreed upon in this meeting,” he continued.

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