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Special body needed to harmonize regulation
In line with the President’s idea of forming a national legislation center, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development in its 2012 report recommended that Indonesia establish a special body to conduct regulatory reform. One of the goals is to foster regulatory quality by evaluating a number of laws and regulations.
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According to data compiled on the Law and Human Rights Ministry’s website, 8,945 new regulations at the national level were issued from 2014 to October 2018. Given the absence of an obligation to evaluate prevailing regulations, these new regulations could potentially contravene other regulations. (JP/Seto Wardhana)
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n his closing remarks at the National Conference on Constitutional Law in Jakarta a couple of weeks ago, State Secretary Pratikno conveyed President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s desire to carry out regulatory reform. Among the efforts is to establish a special body to harmonize regulations and legislation.
The issue of regulatory disharmony was initially raised in the first presidential debate last January. President Jokowi offered the idea of establishing a new “national legislation center” that will be specifically tasked to overcome the problems of conflicting and overlapping regulations.
Currently, the authority to plan and harmonize laws and regulations is held by units under the Law and Human Rights Ministry, namely the National Law Development Agency (BPHN) and the Laws and Regulations Directorate General.
In line with the President’s idea of forming a national legislation center, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development in its 2012 report recommended that Indonesia establish a special body to conduct regulatory reform. One of the goals is to foster regulatory quality by evaluating a number of laws and regulations.
The causes of the disorderly regulatory system in Indonesia can be grouped into several conditions. First, legislative planning that is not in line with development planning. In each administration, the government has two guidelines, namely the National Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJMN) as a development planning document prepared by the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) and the National Legislation Program (Prolegnas) as a legislation-planning document prepared by the BPHN.
This parallel, but separated process has resulted in legislative products that are not in line with development needs. In the 2015 to 2019 period, there were 84 bills proposed in the RPJMN and 82 bills proposed in the government’s Prolegnas draft. Of these, only 70 bills were proposed through the two institutions (Bappenas and BPHN).
Second, the government and the House of Representatives consider the law a “panacea” or a solution to all problems. Indonesia has several levels of regulations, namely laws or national legislation made and mutually agreed by the President and the House, government regulations and presidential regulations (executive order) as subordinate legislations that serve as executive guidelines for the implementation of government policies, and local regulations or bylaws made and agreed by the heads of regional administrations and local legislatures that are only applied at regional levels.
