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he House of Representatives plans to deliberate three controversial bills — the omnibus bill on job creation and bills to revise both the Criminal Code (KUHP) and the 1995 Correctional Facilities Law — despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and persistent public protests against the bills.

House Deputy Speaker Azis Syamsuddin announced in a plenary session on Thursday that all House factions and commissions had agreed in a meeting the day before to deliberate the three bills.

“Lawmakers have discussed and approved them in the plenary agenda,” the Golkar Party politician said, adding that 31 lawmakers had attended the meeting at the House compound in Senayan, Central Jakarta, while had 278 joined the meeting virtually.

Azis said the House Legislation Body (Baleg) would handle deliberations on the omnibus bill while House Commission III overseeing legal affairs would discuss the revisions to the KUHP and the 1995 Correctional Facilities Law.

Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly and Commission III resumed deliberation on revisions to the KUHP and the 1995 Correctional Facilities Law after the government decided to begin releasing inmates to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the country’s overcrowded prisons.

The government released more than 5,500 inmates on Wednesday. It plans to release about 50,000 in total.

“Please understand that the government is committed to continuing the deliberation on both bills. We don’t disagree on the bills,” Yasonna said in a virtual meeting with Commission III.

Despite the approval to continue deliberations, some lawmakers have expressed their objections, saying the House and executive should instead focus on handling the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The House and the government should focus on the management of COVID-19. We should postpone the other agenda items. It’s not right. People are facing a difficult situation due to the pandemic. Many of them are struggling to eat, but we, out of the blue, are discussing the omnibus bill and the other bills,” said Benny K. Harman of the Democratic Party.

Another Dem lawmaker, Herman Khaeron, echoed Benny’s sentiments.

“We respect the other legislative agendas, but it’s better for us to focus on COVID-19,” he said.

House Speaker Puan Maharani, who attended the meeting virtually, did not say anything about the deliberation of the problematic bills. The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) executive and daughter of the party’s chairwoman and former president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, previously appeared reluctant to deliberate the omnibus bill on job creation. She said the House should be careful discussing the bill amid the growing public objections to it.

Students, workers, activists and experts took to the streets late last year to protest the government’s plan to endorse the bill, saying it would harm the nation’s democracy, environment and the interests of workers. They were prepared to rally in March as well but were forced to cancel after restrictions were placed on mass public gatherings to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

Critics have slammed the legislative agenda, saying that lawmakers have used the pandemic to decrease public participation in the deliberation of the problematic bills.

Activists and members of the public have also been persistent in protesting revisions to the KUHP and 1995 Correctional Facilities Law, considering them threats to democracy and civil rights.

In September 2019, tens of thousands of citizens, many of them university students, took to the streets to oppose the two bills. This prompted the government and the House to postpone deliberations.  

Activists from the National Alliance for the Reform of the KUHP said the government and the House should not use the pandemic as an opportunity to discuss the problematic bills.

The alliance noted that the final draft of the KUHP bill included many controversial articles that would excessively criminalize people, including articles to restore a ban on insulting the President, which had been repealed by the Constitutional Court, and stipulations on morality that criminalized, among other things, consensual sex between unmarried people, cohabitation and the promotion of contraception.

“If the government and the House still insist on doing this, it will actually worsen the COVID-19 pandemic. We call on the deliberations to be immediately postponed until the situation returns to normal,” the activists said in a written statement on Thursday.

The National Welfare Movement (Gekanas) labor union also called on the House to stop the deliberation of the omnibus bill, saying that the union would hold a massive protest if the request was ignored.

“If they don’t listen to our demands, we will hold a massive protest despite the pandemic,” the group said.

Charles Simabura, a researcher at Andalas University’s Center for Constitutional Studies, called on President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to withdraw the presidential letter that gave a green light for the deliberations, saying that the government should focus its energy on COVID-19 and its widespread effects.

“If this continues, it is clear that the government and the House are using the pandemic as an opportunity to pass the problematic bills,” he said.