The head of the House of Representatives'€™ special committee (Pansus) investigating state-owned port authority PT Pelindo II for graft, Rieke Diah Pitaloka, has called on President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo to immediately carry out the committee'€™s recommendation that State Owned Enterprises Minister Rini Soemarno and Pelindo II president director Richard Joost Lino be dismissed from their posts.
 
Rieke asserted that there would be serious consequences if Jokowi did not carry out the committee'€™s recommendations.
 
'€œThis could lead to an impeachment motion against the President [...],'€ said Rieke as quoted by kompas.com in his written statement on Monday.
 
The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) politician further explained that in the House code of conduct, which implements a regulation from the 2014 Legislative Institution Law, also known as the MD3 Law, stipulates that if the government does not follow up on inquiry committee recommendations approved by the House in a plenary meeting, 25 or more House members have the right to take the matter further.
 
'€œIf the President still doesn'€™t follow up the recommendations, he could be deemed to be conspiring with others in violating the law and also to be himself contravening the 1945 Constitution, assorted Constitutional Court rulings and other rules and regulations,'€ said Rieke.
 
'€œThis means the President would have committed serious and harmful mistakes; thus, he would have to be dismissed from his position,'€ the lawmaker said.
 
Rieke also criticized Vice President Jusuf Kalla who claimed that the committee'€™s recommendations were politically motivated.
 
She suspected that Kalla was aiming to shape public opinion into the belief that the Pelindo special committee was not a legally binding inquiry committee and she expected that President Jokowi would then also take that view.
 
'€œIt would be better if Pak JK consulted with a constitutional law expert so that he doesn'€™t make logical errors in interpreting the Constitution and the law,'€ said Rieke.
 
Earlier, Kalla said that the Pelindo special committee'€™s recommendations for the dismissal of Rini and RJ Lino from their posts were just politically motivated maneuvers.
 
He said the government had its own ideas to consider when deciding whether it would implement or reject the committee'€™s recommendations.
 
'€œThese [recommendations] are only political suggestions. The government will obviously consider not only political factors but also other aspects,'€ said Kalla at the Bogor Presidential Palace in West Java, on Friday.
 
In her arguments, Rieke said that as far as political aspects go, the Pelindo special committee found out for a fact that both the state-owned enterprises minister and the Pelindo II president director had acted in contradiction with good governance principles.
 
Several laws the lawmaker said had been violated by Rini and Lino were Law No.17/2008 on shipping, Law No.17/2003 on state finances, Law No.19/2003 on state-owned enterprises, Law No.1/2004 on state assets and Law No.30/2002 on corruption eradication.
 
Economically, Rieke said, the special committee found that Pelindo practices contained many irregularities. In the company'€™s 1999-2019 contract agreements, there were required to be technical know-how transfers, but, there were none found.
 
'€œWhat occurred was transfer pricing practices involving companies that are not competent at all in shipping services,'€ said Rieke.
 
'€œSuch tax fraud continued to happen due to our weak bargaining position with foreign investors,'€ she went on. (ebf)(+)

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