In a hearing on the bill at the House of Representatives’ Legislative Body (Baleg) on Tuesday, PDI-P lawmakers questioned why several articles in the bill transferred authority from “ministries and local administrations” to “the government.”

PDI-P lawmaker Arteria Dahlan, for instance took issue with the shift of regional administrations’ authority regarding spatial planning to the central government, citing Law No. 23/2014 on regional administration, which stipulates that the central administration has authority only in matters of foreign policy, defense and security, justice, fiscal and monetary policy and religion.

"Spatial planning is not the central administration's authority. It’s illogical," he said.

Arteria went on to question who wrote the bill. “Did they read the 2014 law?” he asked. “Perhaps businesspeople are the ones behind this.”

Fellow PDI-P politician Sturman Panjaitan echoed Arteria’s concerns, saying the faction would need more time to study the pending 3,172 articles on the bill’s inventory problem list (DIM).

"We need more time to study all of these. We could not immediately agree after the government explained it to us. We have to be careful,” he said.

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