The council has yet to endorse any of the 18 draft bylaws listed in this year’s legislative program (Prolegda).

The 2014-2019 city council term ends next month, with councillors securing seats in April’s legislative election to be inaugurated on Aug. 26.

However, the deputy head of the council’s legislation body, Merry Hotma, put the blame on the city administration. The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) politician said the administration should not have taken so long to submit this year’s draft bylaws, as 14 of the 18 drafts had been proposed by the executive.

“[Progress] depends on the executive. We have been waiting for their proposals. All this time, the executive has not intensely proposed drafts,” she told The Jakarta Post on Monday, claiming that all the drafts proposed by the legislative were under deliberation.

She added that arguments that had arisen between councillors and the city administration during the deliberation had also delayed endorsement of the drafts.

Merry argued that the councillors had been careful in deliberating the drafts for the sake of making sure that people’s aspirations were met.

“We do not want to pursue quantitative targets if [that means] the regulations harm the people,” she said.

The council is currently deliberating four drafts proposed by the administration, namely on the accountability report for the 2018 city budget, on waste management, on vehicle ownership transfer fees and on city working units. Only the first of those four was listed in the 2018 priority list.

Despite the sluggish progress, Merry was upbeat that the council would endorse around eight bylaws prior to ending its term in office.

Within nearly five years, the sitting councillors have endorsed 26 bylaws. Eleven of them were passed last year.

Forty-five of the 106 current councillors have defended their seats by being elected for another five-year term, while 61 councillors-elect will start their duties after the inauguration next month.

As most of the drafts are left hanging in the air, council secretary Muhammad Yuliadi explained that the councillors and the city administration had agreed to hold regular meetings every three months to monitor the use of funds. That measure, which had been carried out since last year, aimed to prevent any rush in budget disbursement at the end of the year, he said.

Indonesian Parliament Watch (Formappi) analyst Lucius Karus lambasted the city councilors for a poor performance, calling them unable to address pressing issues facing the public.

“The City Council does not have the vision to identify the most-needed regulations for the community, so the mapping out of legal issues and regulations is indeed weak,” he told the Post on Monday.

He added that the legislative body tended to “go with the flow” run by the executive, resulting in low-spirited ‘political dynamics’ during the last two years under Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan, when compared to his three predecessors, namely Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, Basuki “BTP” Tjahja Purnama and Djarot Saiful Hidayat.

With only one month left, Lucius said the councillors should endeavor to endorse as many legal products as possible to at least leave a legacy at the end of their term.

Indonesian Forum for Budget Transparency (FITRA) secretary-general Misbah Hasan expressed similar sentiment, saying the council was unable to offer “innovative” bylaws.

Popular

PDI-P will likely be part of opposition: Ganjar

Indonesia one step from Olympics after beating South Korea

Bahlil leads task force to boost sugar, bioethanol production in Papua