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House presses ahead with 'pork barrel' legislation despite opposition
The House of Representatives agreed on Tuesday to endorse a proposed revision to the 2014 Village Law, which seeks to grant village heads more funds and longer terms as a House initiative, paving the way for what experts deemed a "pork barrel" legislation to be passed into law.
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Transporter: A courier takes sacrificial goats using his motorized cart from a local animal market to their buyer in Kirig village in Kudus regency, Central Java, on June 23, 2023. (Antara/Yusuf Nugroho)
The House of Representatives agreed on Tuesday to endorse a proposed revision to the 2014 Village Law, which seeks to grant village heads more funds and longer terms, as a House initiative, paving the way for what experts deemed a "pork barrel" legislation to be passed into law.
In a plenary session on Tuesday, all nine political parties at the House threw their weight behind the proposed revision without any objections. As House Speaker Puan Maharani of the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) announced the House’ unanimous endorsement, dozens of village heads who gathered inside the plenary hall to witness the meeting burst into roaring cheers and applause.
With the bill now listed as a House initiative, the next step would be for the House and the executive branch to discuss the bill before it could be passed into law.
The revision first gained traction earlier this year, when thousands of village heads gathered in front of the House complex in South Jakarta to demand for a longer tenure and better funding.
Tuesday’s plenary session came just one week after the House Legislation Body (Baleg) concluded its rushed drafting process of the proposed revision and decided to seek endorsement for the bill in a plenary meeting, a first step that is necessary to formally start deliberation on the bill at the House.
But President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo suggested that the government was not in any rush to discuss the bill at the House.
