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ouse leadership has invited the country’s top anti-graft and auditing bodies to monitor the House’s budget committee meetings, where lawmakers allegedly collude with government officials and businessmen to manipulate state money.

“We will send official invitations to the KPK [Corruption Eradication Commission] and the BPK [Supreme Audit Agency] to attend every budgetary body meeting. This is our response to the public that has questioned the body’s transparency,” House Deputy Speaker Pramono Anung of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) said on Friday.

KPK and BPK officials will sit in the visitor’s area and will not be permitted to interrupt the meetings, Pramono said. “They will be just like ordinary visitors in an open House hearing,” he said.

Another House deputy speaker, Priyo Budi Santoso of the Golkar Party, said that The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center (PPATK) had found 21 suspicious transactions implicating a member of the budgetary body.

“We are grateful to the PPATK for informing us. I hope law enforcement bodies will follow up on the information and help us find the weaknesses in the body’s budgeting mechanisms,” he said, declining to identify implicated lawmaker.

The body has been the target of much criticism after a series of recent corruption cases linked to government procurement projects, which many believe began with illicit deals made during budget meetings.

Numerous lawmakers have forwarded the idea of disbanding the body, which has been dubbed by activists as a “den of thieves”, citing potential overlapping authorities with House commissions.

The invitation to anti-graft officials and state auditors was seen as a move to restrain the proposal to disband the committee by promising a more accountable and transparent budgetary body.

Pramono declined to make all budgetary meetings open to the public. “But the KPK and BPK officials will be invited to monitor the closed-door meetings,” he said.

The KPK proposed having its officials monitor budgetary meetings a few years ago, but no immediate green lights came from the House.

KPK chairman Busyro Muqoddas said he welcomed the invitation, saying it would help the House curb budget mafia practices engineered by certain lawmakers.

“The fact is that budget mismanagement is still there, so we need to create a stronger supervision mechanism to end such illegal practices,” Busyro said.

Also on Friday, Busyro met with leaders of the House political factions.

“We presented a concept of clean, accountable and transparent budgeting. This is part of the KPK’s efforts to raise lawmakers’ awareness to prevent corruption at the House and save the state budget. So far, their response is good,” the former Judicial Commission chairman said.

With a transparent mechanism, Busyro said, there would be no room for culprits to make illicit negotiations and misuse the state budget.

More than 30 former and current lawmakers have been named suspects by the KPK — some of whom are currently in prison — since the commission’s establishment in 2003.

Activist Uchok Sky Khadafi from the Indonesian Forum for Budget Transparency (Fitra) said inviting the KPK and BPK was good but not good enough.

“Public access to budget-related documents is very limited, and they still have ‘underground’ meetings, which are usually conducted outside the House building, in hotels and restaurants,” he said.

Uchok said the meetings at the House, which would be attended by KPK and BPK officials, could merely be “theater”, as the illicit negotiations and arrangements would have been made during the “underground” meetings.