House to meet again to discuss planned new office building

Mounting public criticism against the planned Rp 1.13 trillion construction of a new office building at the House of Representatives has forced heads of factions at the House to hold a consultative meeting to discuss the controversial plan – again.

The decision to hold the meeting was made by the House’s Consultative Body on Thursday, tempointeraktif.com reported.

Four factions have voiced their rejection of the plan and requested holding the consultative meeting. The four factions are the National Mandate Party (PAN), Great Indonesia Movement (Gerindra), the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and the United Development Party (PPP).

PAN faction secretary Teguh Juwarno said the planned meeting should be held before the House goes into recess on April 9. He said he hoped the plan could be dismissed before the recess.

“We will probably start a petition tomorrow to reject the planned construction. We will start from heads of factions first,” he added.

He said the request to hold the meeting was made because the planned construction process, particularly the tender, was not in accordance with the conclusion made in an earlier consultative meeting held in October last year. At the time, House speaker Marzuki Alie said all factions had agreed on the plan.

Teguh said the minutes of meeting show that all factions did extend their approval of the construction of the new building, but almost all gave evaluation notes.

“So the approval was with conditions,” he said.

He also said that PPP legislator Romahurmuziy had said during Thursday’s meeting that the construction should be postponed until awareness had been raised to gain approval from each faction.