T

he recent amendment to the 2014 Legislative Bodies (MD3) Law, which criminalizes any person or institution deemed to have been disrespectful to the House of Representatives, has been met with a chorus of condemnation from activists and legal experts who believe the provision will be used to silence critics.

The amended law was passed on Monday after months of deliberation. It includes a provision granting the House’s ethics council the power to take legal action against an individual or legal entity for “disrespecting the dignity” of the House and its members.

The provision, stipulated in Article 122, is said to have been inserted only recently and is meant to protect the legislature from “contempt”.

A person, for example, could face charges for calling the House “corrupt” or accusing a lawmaker of an ethics breach without supporting evidence. The person could be charged under Article 310 and 311 on defamation in the penal code.

The insertion of the controversial provision caught many by surprise, as the public were focusing their attention on the House’s plan to reinstate the article criminalizing insults to the President in the Criminal Code bill.

Constitutional law expert Feri Amsari of the Center for Constitutional Studies (Pusako) at Andalas University said on Tuesday that the provision was potentially unconstitutional as it might violate Article 28 of the 1945 Constitution on freedom of speech.

The Constitution, he argued, also limited the House’s authority to three parts: legislation, supervision and budgeting.

“If the House grants itself the power to press criminal charges against citizens, such authority is beyond what is prescribed in the Constitution,” Feri told The Jakarta Post.

The House’s ethics council was supposed to watch over the conduct of lawmakers and not the public, Indonesian Parliament Watch (Formappi) senior researcher Lucius Karus said.

“[Article 22 of the MD3 Law] could be used as a political tool by politicians to criminalize certain people,” he said. “The consequence of this is that corruption and bribery would likely be more rampant among politicians.”

In another controversial provision, the law also stipulates that lawmakers can only be summonsed by the President based on the ethics council’s recommendation.

Such a provision, critics say, practically grants House members legal immunity.

The activists said they were still considering whether or not to challenge the law in the Constitutional Court, given their low confidence in the court under the leadership of Arief Hidayat.

Arief was recently found guilty of an ethics breach for attending a meeting with lawmakers at a hotel without an official invitation.

The House began deliberating the MD3 bill in 2016. The passage of the bill had long been stalled by the refusal of several political factions to grant the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle’s (PDI-P) request that the election winner be given a seat on the board of speakers.

The PDI-P won the 2014 legislative election, but the old MD3 Law had prevented it from getting a House speakership because at the time the House was controlled by the opposition parties, some of which have since joined the PDI-led ruling coalition.

The party, of which President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo is a member, may have achieved its goal, but the country has ended up with several controversial provisions that might have been hastily inserted less than a month before the law’s passage.

The “contempt” article was proposed by the ethics council and was included in the bill in April 2017 by the House’s legislative body (Baleg), Baleg chairman Supratman Andi Agtas said.

The House then sent the proposal to the government for approval, but the latter had been slow in giving its response, Supratman said. “Only three days before we held a working meeting last week did the government give the green light for the article.”

Baleg deputy chairman Firman Soebagyo, of the Golkar Party, dismissed the idea that the House was opposed to criticism, saying that “we only want to make people understand that they must respect the House as an institution and lawmakers, because we are their representatives.”

All political factions reportedly backed the provisions on criminalizing those insulting the House and lawmakers.

During Monday’s plenary session, only two parties — the United Development Party (PPP) and the Nasdem Party — walked out in protest at the law. But they were protesting the new House leadership composition and not the articles on contempt.

The lawmakers claimed that they would be prudent in exercising their authority, calling on the public to have faith in their judgment.

House ethics council chairman Sufmi Dasco Ahmad of the Gerindra Party said the council would create guidelines or a code of conduct to define actions deemed to be “disrespectful” to the House.