I

t is business as usual for members of the House of Representatives to fly to foreign countries for “comparative studies”.

Despite criticism from watchdogs and the public who have dismissed the trips as a waste of state funds, a number of lawmakers are now making trips to a number of countries in Asia and Europe. The purpose of the costly trips, they claimed, was to conduct studies of “best practices” in other countries that could provide them with new insights into bills under deliberation at the House.

Members of the special committee assigned by the House to review the 1999 Civil Servant Law are on their way to Finland. The special committee deliberating the social conflict management bill is now in Sweden and will also visit India.

Several legislators from Commission IV overseeing agriculture, plantation and forestry are visiting the US, China, Japan and India; while members from Commission IX reviewing the 2004 Overseas Labor Placement and Protection Law are slated to visit the Middle East and Hong Kong in the immediate future.

The commissions and special committees include between 40 to 50 lawmakers. Meanwhile, around 300 of 560 lawmakers signed the attendance book at the House’s plenary session on Tuesday, while only 173 legislators were actually seen.

Deputy House Speaker Priyo Budi Santoso, who presided over the session, deplored the absence of lawmakers at the meeting, in which the House was scheduled to review the newly elected leaders of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Priyo said that the House leadership has tightened its policy on foreign trips for lawmakers to improve the House’s performance in lawmaking as well as its supervision of the government’s policies.

“The House leadership has decided to become selective in approving foreign trips for lawmakers and limited foreign trips for the House’s Inter-parliamentary Cooperation Committee (BKSAP), Commission I overseeing information, defense and foreign affairs, and other commissions and special committees, that are preparing important bills. The foreign trips are not picnics or year-end tourist trips,” Priyo said. “[The trips] have been planned since January and were approved by the House leadership,” he said, adding that the foreign trips were expected to expand lawmakers’ horizons on many strategic issues.

He said the House leadership had also required that all commissions and special committees present a report on what they learned from the comparative studies they carried out.

House Speaker Marzuki Alie concurred, saying that he had approved the foreign trips conducted by the two commissions and special committees because they were needed not only to widen the lawmakers’ horizons, but also to seek input and learn how about the issues observed were handled and anticipated, and what their implications were.

Separately, the executive director of the Indonesian legislative watchdog, Formappi, Sebastian Salang, blamed the foreign trips on the House leadership, which he said was powerless to prevent lawmakers from making foreign trips at the state’s expense.

“They make foreign trips at the end of the year to spend the House’s budget,” he said.

According to Sebastian, it would be better for House leaders to become very selective and allow only trips for important international events so that the House could reach at least 50 percent of its legislative target.