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House of Representatives’ (DPR) member who is suspected of having committed plagiarism has been told to publicly apologize; otherwise, he will be reported to the House’s council of ethics for punishment.

Marwan Jafar of the National Awakening Party (PKB) was said to have plagiarized two articles by Jusman Dalle, a university student from Makassar, South Sulawesi.

“If he doesn’t make a public apology within the next few days, I will fly to Jakarta and file an official report to the House’s ethics council,” Jusman told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

According to Jusman, Marwan had apologized by phone and wanted to see him in person in Makassar. “… but I don’t know if he is eager to make a public apology. As a people’s representative, he must have a big heart to admit any wrongdoings,” Jusman said, adding that he received several phone calls asking him not to carry out his move toward the House.

Jusman accused Marwan of having copied some parts of two of his articles, which had been published on two different online news portals, combining them into a new article titled “Pengelolaan Energi Libya Pasca Gadhafi” (Post-Qaddafi Energy Management in Libya), which was published in the newspaper Koran Tempo on Friday.

According to Jusman, around 85 percent of Marwan’s article was directly taken from his articles titled “Perang Ideotik [Ideologi ekonomi politik] Libya” (The War of Ideology, Economy, and Politics in Libya) published on detik.com on March 28, 2011, and “Quo Vadis Libya” published on okezone.com on Oct. 25, 2011.

“This is a serious ethical infringement. As an intellectual, I feel offended,” Jusman said.

Marwan, who is also the head of the PKB faction at the House, denied any wrongdoing, although he had apologized to Jusman.

“I did not plagiarize. We both may have used similar arguments, substance, and references,” the lawmaker was quoted as saying by tempo.co.

 “This is only an article, not a thesis, dissertation or book,” he added.

However, according to the Post’s observation, at least 13 out of the total 15 paragraphs in Marwan’s article were very similar to the paragraphs in Jusman’s articles. The similarities were very obvious, even down to the wording.

Marwan claimed he had written numerous published articles without any complaints from the public.

Meanwhile, Koran Tempo’s senior editor, Yos Rizal Suriadji, said his paper would put Marwan on its blacklist if the latter was proven to have plagiarized the articles. “We are now investigating the matter,” he said.

It is widely known that many lawmakers employ so-called “ghostwriters” to help them write press releases, seminar papers or articles for publication in the media. The ghostwriters are usually the lawmakers’ special staffers whose salaries are paid by the state.

Lawmaker Bambang Soesatyo of the Golkar Party confirmed special staffers might be “abused” to do such jobs.

Bambang, however, claimed he had never abused his staff members to do such writing jobs. “I was a journalist. All my published articles were my own writing and derived from my own ideas,” he told the Post.

One lawmaker’s special staffer who requested anonymity admitted he had sometimes compiled articles from the internet and turned them into an article for the boss.

“Many staffers do that because their bosses [the legislators] may give them extra bonuses if they are satisfied with the articles. Many staffers, however, use shortcuts in creating good articles; they use internet search engines to search for references and then copy them,” the staffer said.

A communication expert from the University of Indonesia, Ade Armando, said using ghostwriters does not infringe ethics, “as long as the ghostwriter’s job is only to make his or her client’s ideas readable”.