House admits poor performance, vows to speed up legislation

Not a full House: Two legislators chat at a plenary session of the House of Representatives (DPR) on Monday. Half the seats in the House plenary hall were empty, with House Speaker Marzuki Alie of Democratic Party vowing to boost the House’s performance this year. Antara/Yudhi MahatmaBlaming various problems, the House of Representatives admitted its poor performance in the legislative function and promised it would make better progress this year.

In the meantime, activists criticized the House, which, they said, only focused on its budget and supervisory roles rather than improving its ineffective law-making functions.

“The House admits its poor achievement in its legislative function due to various problems,” House Speaker Marzuki Alie said at a plenary session here on Monday.

The House aimed at enacting 91 laws in 2011 but in reality it endorsed only 25 laws, or 27 percent, a similar performance to 2010 when only 10 out of 70 targeted bills were enacted.

He defended the legislative performance, however, and said the public should not pay attention to the number of laws it produced. Instead, the people should appreciate the House for having produced at least five laws aimed at improving the people’s social welfare.

As examples, Marzuki cited the bill on social security providers, which appointed state-owned PT Askes to provide healthcare for all and state-owned PT Jamsostek to administer occupational accident, old-age pension and death benefit programs for workers and their families.

He also welcomed the enactment of the long-awaited bill on the financial services authority (OJK) to improve the supervision of banks.

Marzuki said that this year, the House aimed at 64 bills, including 16 carried over from last year.

The 64 are, among others, the revision of the Criminal Codes Law, the 2004 Overseas Labor Placement and Protection Law, the 2008 Legislative Election Law and the 1974 Yogyakarta Special Law, as well as bills on national security, prevention of illegal logging, medical education, legal aid, the handling of social conflicts and a bill on religious harmony.

Marzuki called on all legislators to make 2012 the year to consolidate and reach the legislative target.

He said the House had only 88 working days in the sitting period and it would allocate 60 percent of these to accomplish legislative tasks so that several bills that were given top priority this year, including the legislative election bill, could be endorsed.

Marzuki singled out the legislative election bill. “This bill has a strategic role in the 2014 general election and relevant parties will need adequate time to disseminate it to the people long before the election is held.”

Executive director of the Indonesian Parliament Watchdog (Formappi) Sebastian Salang likened the House to a kindergarten full of stubborn children, who, he said, were not willing to improve their performance.

“If the House learned from developed countries’ experiences and if legislators improved their capacity and competence, their legislative performance would rapidly improve,” he said.

According to him, the number of special committees assigned to deliberate bills should be reduced by 50 percent from the current 50 and committee members should present their faction’s political stances instead of their own personal opinions.

“If a special committee consisted of 25 members, the House could form at least 20 committees simultaneously and the deliberation time could be shortened because it would be based on their own factions’ political stances,” he said, adding that such a system was practiced in developed democratic countries.