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senior lawmaker at the House of Representatives says that contentious debate may lead to a delayed vote on a bill to regulate the nation’s mass organizations.

“The special committee deliberating on the bill should not be upset if the House amends the bill,” Priyo Budi Santoso, one of the deputy House’s speakers, said on Friday.

The House had planned to vote on the bill at a plenary session scheduled for April 12 after several weeks of deliberation punctuated by criticism from mass organizations, specifically Muslim groups, NGOs, students and workers that it might infringe on people’s rights to association.

Priyo said that the committee deliberating the bill must consider input from the heads of the nation’s largest Muslim social organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) chief Said Agil Siradj and Muhammadiyah chief Din Syamsuddin and Said Agil Siradj, as well as Haris Azhar Azis, the coordinator of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras).

Din previously said that Muhammadiyah would challenge the bill in the Constitutional Court if it was enacted into law.

Several Islamic groups have objected to language in the bill requiring all civil society groups use the state ideology of Pancasila as their core ideology, which they claim would evoke the era when Soeharto’s authoritarian administration cracked down on organizations that refused to do so.

Human rights activists have also criticized the bill, calling it draconian and a threat to democracy.

The bill, which would replace the 1985 law of the same name, would gives the central government the power to freeze or disband organizations.

However, activists have said the bill could be used by officials to silence critics by accusing them of behavior counter to Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution.

Articles 2 and 3 of the bill stipulate that all mass organizations, including foreign organizations operating in the nation, must conform to the 1945 Constitution and Pancasila.

In February, a group of independent experts with the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) sent a letter to the House saying that the bill would threaten Indonesia’s democracy.

Contacted separately, the chairman of the special committee deliberating the bill, lawmaker Abdul Malik Haramain, said that the committee had resolved nearly all contentious issues in the bill.

While Abdul said that he was aware of the criticism, he added that the state needed the authority to “discipline” problematic groups or organizations operating in the country.

The government, he argued, had to have the authority to dissolve groups that ran counter to the state’s ideology and interests.