Presidential Chief of Staff Moeldoko said Jokowi considered lackluster public communication on the government’s part to be the major cause of widespread opposition to the jobs law in recent weeks.

“We were all scolded by the President, our public communication was indeed very poor,” Moeldoko said at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta on Wednesday as quoted by kompas.com.

Every Cabinet member has committed to rectifying their approach to public communication, particularly in regard to the omnibus jobs law to minimize misunderstanding, according to him.

“We will immediately reflect on [our errors] for future improvement,” Moeldoko said, adding that the government had been overwhelmed by the sheer amount of “disinformation” on social media regarding the jobs law.

The Job Creation Law was passed on Oct. 5 despite strong opposition, triggering waves of mass protests, some of which turned violent, in several regions across the country over the past couple of weeks.

Jokowi previously claimed that criticism of the law was merely based on “disinformation and hoaxes spread through social media”.

The President’s statement drew the ire of jobs law critics and protesters as they maintained that the public had been denied access to the final draft of the legislation.

Earlier, labor unions called on the House of Representatives to conduct a legislative review on the recently passed omnibus law, challenging the Democratic Party and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) to initiate it.

In a legislative review, the House reviews certain aspects of a law in line with public demands and makes amendments, including annulling specific points.

The Democrats and the PKS were the two factions to oppose the bill passed into law in a House plenary session on Oct. 5. The former walked out of the session after engaging in a verbal squabble with the House leadership.

“This call is especially for the two factions who strongly reject the law,” Confederation of Indonesian Trade Unions (KSPI) president Said Iqbal said in a virtual presser on Wednesday. “The lawmakers must exercise their rights by conducting a legislative review.”

He called on the two factions not to "take cover behind mass actions.”

"If it is true that you reject the law, you should take the initiative, don't hide behind the people’s opposition,” he continued.

Despite specifically challenging the two factions, the workers have also sent letters to all nine factions in the House, as well as to the House speaker, the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) speaker and the Regional Representatives Council (DPD) speaker.

In addition to calling for a legislative review, the KSPI with the All-Indonesia Workers Union Confederation (KSPSI) and 32 other worker confederations are preparing to challenge the law at the Constitutional Court.

The PKS, however, seems pessimistic about the prospect of a legislative review.

PKS lawmaker Mulyanto said the legislative review would take a lot of time because the process was similar to submitting a new bill, starting from drafting and submitting it to the House Legislation Body (Baleg), including it in the House’s National Legislation Program (Prolegnas), discussing the draft, handing it over to Baleg to be endorsed as a House-initiated bill, as well as a plenary session for the House to officially endorse it.

After that the House must send the bill to the government, which will then be involved in the deliberation. If both agree, the House could pass the amended bill into law in a plenary session.

“With the current political configuration in the House, we are less than optimistic,” Mulyanto told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

The Democratic Party, on the other hand, has not yet responded to workers’ call for a legislative review. (rfa)