TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Government, House accused of 'legislative crime'
The government and the House of Representatives are being accused of having colluded to pass controversial bills in the last months of their tenure, bills that have been criticized for violating citizen rights and endangering the fight against graft
Change Size
T
span>The government and the House of Representatives are being accused of having colluded to pass controversial bills in the last months of their tenure, bills that have been criticized for violating citizen rights and endangering the fight against graft.
Center for Indonesian Law and Policy Studies (PSHK) researcher Agil Oktaryal said the government and lawmakers were committing "legislative crime", which is how he refers to the maneuvers to rapidly pass certain laws in order to accommodate political deals that they have made before the start of the second term of President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo and the inauguration of the new members of the legislative bodies.
Agil added that the passage of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) Law amendment, after having been stalled for years, resulted from a political trade-off over the passing of another amendment of the Legislative Institutions (MD3) Law that would allow all political parties to share in the control of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR).
“It’s a political trade; the 10 party factions were probably still split over passing the KPK revision bill, so the parties were accommodated with the passing of the MD3 revision bill, which would get them to pass the KPK revision bill,” Agil said.
It only took six days for the House of Representatives to pass the new KPK bill into law in a plenary session on Tuesday.
A member of House Commission III overseeing legal affairs, Taufiqulhadi of the NasDem Party, said there was no correlation anymore between allowing more time to hear the KPK or public opinion and their intention to pass the bill quickly. He said that as in any lawmaking process, the “political will” of the lawmakers and the government was the main factor.
In the deliberations over the KPK bill, for example, Taufiq said that the House did not want to delay it further as they had been discussing it since 2012.
“We have to endorse the KPK bill immediately because we don’t want the bill to be relinquished. We don’t have a carryover procedure yet,” he said.
Along with the deliberations over the KPK bill, the House was mulling over a bill to make carrying over unfinished bills possible. The relevant issues were to be resolved by the end of the month. The bill would allow the new lawmakers to continue deliberating old bills without having to start again from scratch.
Despite the KPK bill’s speedy passage, it took three years for the lawmakers to deliberate over a sexual violence bill — when they mostly only debated the title and the definition of sexual violence.
The sexual violence bill is listed as a national legislation priority; the KPK bill was not.
“[The passage of the KPK bill] happened because the political interest for the bill was very big. Many politicians have become more uncomfortable with the KPK, because the commission turned out to be effective. Like I said, by definition, corruption is usually done by people who have power, and those people are inside the House” said Bivitri Susanti, a constitutional law expert with the Jentera School of Law.
“On the other hand, the sexual violence bill is also heavily related to political interests because there are many political parties based on religion, and these parties do not agree with the bill; therefore, the bill's deliberation is stalled. It takes forever for them to even decide about the title of the bill.”
Bivitri added that people wrongly presume that the bill has a liberal ideology.
“I was also involved in drafting the bill so I know about this: The presumption is wrong. Some have this assumption because they think this bill will give women too much power, when in fact this bill is about the victim, not about women who are going to oppress men.”
A coalition of civil activist groups has condemned the conflicts of interest between the government and House they perceive to be reflected in a number of select bills that have been pushed and subsequently passed.
A coalition of civil society groups consisting of AURIGA, Indonesia Corruption Watch, Mining Advocacy Network, Publish What You Pay and PSHK has criticized the rapid discussion of a number of problematic and controversial bills by the government and House.
Aside from the KPK Law, there are other controversial bills, including an amendment of the Criminal Code, an energy and mining bill and a land bill, the deliberation of which are being accelerated at the House. (tru)
