T

he business community has called on the government to issue a clarification on the implications of the Constitutional Court’s recent decision to change an article in the Forestry Law at the request of local governments from several regencies in Kalimantan.

The Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin)’s deputy chairman for plantations, Rudyan Kopot, said in Jakarta on Wednesday that the change in the law had caused confusion and uncertainty regarding plantation and mining companies’ ownership of forest areas.

“The Forestry Ministry should, in this case, make a clarification to ensure certainty of the status of the land currently owned by plantation and mining companies or individuals,” he said, adding that if there was no clarification, the government could unilaterally take the areas and declare them as permanent forests.

”All we need is a guarantee because the situation is not clear anymore,” he added.

On Feb. 21, the court issued a ruling to drop the phrase “allocated and/or”, which appears in the third paragraph of the 1999 Forestry Law’s first article, at the request of regents from five regencies in
Central Kalimantan on the grounds that the phrase made the article contrary to the 1945 Constitution.

The regents also argued that the full sentence, which reads “A forested area is a certain area that is ‘allocated and/or’ determined by the government as a permanent forest area”, gave an absolute authority to the central government to declare some of their areas as permanent forests.

With the original article, the plaintiffs said, the central government had the power to set aside nonforest areas, which were already owned by local people, to become forest areas.

However, the change has made the legal status of forest areas even more uncertain.

Rudyan said all stakeholders, including the Indonesian Forestry Businessmen Association (APHI), Forestry Ministry, Public Works Ministry and National Land Agency (BPN) agreed during a meeting on Wednesday to submit a recommendation to Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan, Public Works Minister Djoko Kirmanto, Home Minister Gamawan Fauzi, BPN chief Joyo Winoto, and governors and regents across the country to ask them to issue a clarification so that there would be no more confusion and uncertainty because of the change in the law.

“The change has raised a lot of questions, uncertainty, and different interpretations among stakeholders. The clarification will help us to have the same view on this issue,” the chairman of APHI, Nanang Rofandi, said.

Bambang Soepijanto, the Forestry Ministry’s planology director general who attended the round-table discussion, said that the ministry was currently working to find the best solution to this issue. Thus, businesspeople did not have to worry about the legal status of the land where they carry out their business.

“We have met with the Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Ministry and the Coordinating Economic Minister nine times to discuss what steps we should take following the Court’s decision,” Bambang said. (nfo)