T

he Constitutional Court (MK) is our last resort for final and binding decisions regarding the judicial review of laws. But increasingly it has become the first resort when lawmakers charge on with bills and pass them despite much controversy. Thus phrases like '€œnanti ke MK saja'€ (let'€™s just fix [the bill] at the MK) have emerged each time bills are reportedly about to be passed, even if many questions remain.

This is the situation with several of the laws passed in recent weeks and up until the end of the term of current legislators on Sept. 30. The most controversial was the law on regional elections, which divided the House of Representatives into the camp led by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) that favored retaining direct local elections, and that led by the Gerindra Party, which pushed for regional heads to be elected by the local legislative councils. Gerindra and its allies cited excesses of direct local elections, such as social conflicts and widespread corruption. The plenary session to pass the law was still ongoing as The Jakarta Post went to press.

Another controversial bill was the one on health workers, which was passed Thursday, though a number of health professionals'€™ organizations said they had not been consulted. Shooing such bills into the court has resulted in too few justices handling piles of requests to annul or change the laws '€” on top of hundreds of laws passed on the results of local elections.

The public has every right to expect that its elected lawmakers pass bills that are as airtight as possible '€” instead of laws being virtually pushed to the court even before the gavel is pounded in the plenary session at the House. These days, hopes for solid bills are even more bleak as the new House rushes before its new lawmakers are installed on Oct. 1.

Political battles among politicians, coinciding with diverse interests and ideology dividing the public, are among factors that mar the consultation, deliberation and drafting of the laws.

For instance, overhauling direct local elections became public discourse following the court'€™s confirmation of the victory of Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo as the nation'€™s next president, in its verdict responding to the judicial review request filed by his rival Prabowo Subianto of Gerindra. Thus, whatever the good intentions of Prabowo'€™s political coalition, there has been widespread suspicion of vested interests to control local elections by the Gerindra-led coalition.

But apart from political interests, the often-contested laws have also been traced to the low expertise of the lawmakers, despite their access to vast sources of information and knowledge, including the right to recruit expert staff, many of whom hold Master'€™s degrees.

Meetings between legislators and government officials have often revealed the much higher degree of knowledge, and commitment of the officials who have brought to the House reports on related policies and programs along with updated data. Hopefully the new lawmakers will learn from the current disappointment in their predecessors, strive much more to tap into all their available resources and work toward better policies.