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Reviving omnibus law: Legal option for better coherence
Legal reform took shape in the revocation of old laws and establishment of new ones or the enforcement of new laws replacing several old ones. Creation of omnibus laws helped independent Indonesia reduce 7,000 laws left over by the Dutch to about 400.
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Omnibus laws will be an important legal choice in the future. This is even more the case if it leads to the simplification or removal of laws, to facilitate efforts to bring justice and prosperity to all. (JP/Ricky Yudhistira)
P
resident Joko “Jokowi” Widodo unveiled in his inaugural speech a “new” kind of initiative to form omnibus laws. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines “omnibus” as “a volume containing several books previously published separately”, among other definitions.
In the latest Black’s Law Dictionary 10th Edition the term “omnibus bill” is, among other ways, defined as follows, “(1) A single bill containing various distinct matters, usually drafted […] to force the executive either to accept all the unrelated minor provisions or veto the major provision; and (2) A bill that deals with all proposals relating to a particular subject, such as […] an ‘omnibus crime bill’ dealing with different subjects such as new crimes and grants to states for crime control.”
The Jakarta Post report titled “Omnibus bill to synchronize overlapping regulations” (Nov. 18), indicates that the omnibus bill will be directed toward synchronizing about 70 overlapping laws and regulations, in line with the first and second definitions of Black’s Law Dictionary.
In the legal history of the nation later called Indonesia, there was nothing new about omnibus law. In about 130 years from 1819 to 1949, the Dutch colonial government enforced about 7,000 laws in the Dutch East Indies.
Indonesia’s laws have gone through at least five periods of enforcement: (1) Pre-liberalism period (1819-1840), (2) Liberalism period (1840-1890), (3) Ethical Policy period (1890-1940), (4) Decolonization and New Order period (1940-1998) and (5) Reform and post-reform period (1998-present).
A study by the National Agency for Legal Development (BPHN) at the Law and Human Rights Ministry in 1992 found that in 1995 about 400 regulations from the colonial era remained in force. Today, the number has declined to less than 400 as a result of the national legal development and reform undertaken in the post-1949 period.
Legal reform took shape in the revocation of old laws and establishment of new ones or the enforcement of new laws replacing several old ones. Creation of omnibus laws helped independent Indonesia reduce 7,000 laws left over by the Dutch to about 400.
