Welcome aboard<\/p>\n
A new batch of House of Representatives legislators will be
\ninstalled on Friday. They are the 550 House members who, together
\nwith the 128 members of the Regional Representatives Council
\n(DPD), will make up the new People's Consultative Assembly. We
\nwould like to congratulate them and welcome them aboard.<\/p>\n
Conspicuously absent from the new House are representatives of
\nthe military. The presence of their 38 unelected representatives
\nin the outgoing legislature is now history.<\/p>\n
Under the amended 1945 Constitution, the new Assembly will be
\nless powerful than its predecessors. The outgoing Assembly
\nsummoned president Abdurrahman Wahid twice. The first time
\noccurred in November 1999, only a month after he was elected,
\nwhen he was asked to explain his decision to close the ministry
\nof information and social services.<\/p>\n
The second occasion took place in July 2000, when the
\npresident was asked to explain his decision to remove two
\nministers from his Cabinet. They were state minister for
\ninvestment and state enterprises Laksamana Sukardi, and minister
\nof industry and trade Jusuf Kalla. While he handled himself well
\nin his first appearance before the House, Abdurrahman floundered
\nin the second appearance.<\/p>\n
Gone, therefore, is the 700-member Assembly whose immense
\npower earned it a reputation for being the supreme state
\ninstitution. The new House members, on whom the government has so
\nfar spent Rp 123 billion for their housing and office
\nexpenditures, will have more clout than their predecessors. This
\nis because they were elected by an open split system, in which
\nvoters could either vote for them directly or for their parties.<\/p>\n
In previous years, House members were elected through the
\nproportional representation system, which gave party executives
\nin Jakarta practically all the power to nominate their favored
\nrepresentatives, at the expense of grassroots representation. The
\ntrue representatives of the people at present, however, are the
\nDPD members, being the only ones who were elected directly by the
\npeople.<\/p>\n
Some old faces will be returning to the new House, but most of
\nthe legislators are new, younger, better educated personalities
\nwho, hopefully, are more eager to serve their country and their
\nconstituents. Waiting on the sidelines is a new government with a
\nnew president and vice president, who are to be installed in 20
\ndays' time. In the meantime, as political parties jockey for
\nministerial posts in the new Cabinet, House members are racing to
\nelect their leaders.<\/p>\n
Our thanks are due to the outgoing 550 members of the House of
\nRepresentatives, who came on board at a tumultuous time in 1999,
\nonly a year after Soeharto stepped down. It is ironic, however,
\nthat one sign that outgoing House members are departing is the
\njump in the number of bills that have been endorsed in the last
\ntwo weeks. These include the TNI bill, which was endorsed on
\nThursday, the final day of the House's term, the regional
\nautonomy bill, the migrant workers protection bill, the social
\nsecurity bill, the domestic violence bill, and a pro-investor
\nbill governing highways.<\/p>\n
It is ironic because the House always had a backlog of draft
\nbills that needed to be endorsed, and tended to stall in drafting
\nlaws -- a bit of deja vu recalling the 1997-1999 House, the last
\nlegacy of the fallen Soeharto regime, which also passed a number
\nof bills in its final days in an apparent attempt to be
\nremembered as an effective legislature.<\/p>\n
While we cannot say that the outgoing House had the same
\nmotivation as the 1997-1999 legislature, the similarity is
\ndisturbing. No adequate public hearings were held for many of the
\nbills prior to passing them into law in the last two weeks of its
\nterm.<\/p>\n
During the Soeharto years, the House was often called a rubber
\nstamp for its meekness. Following Soeharto's fall, the House
\nmanaged to strengthen itself, due largely to the reform movement.
\nBut it soon earned itself a new nickname, the talking shop, for
\nits lack of productivity in deliberating, passing and drafting
\nnew legislation.<\/p>\n
Departing House Speaker Akbar Tandjung acknowledged last week
\nthat many of the laws yielded by the House, especially the 160
\nbills endorsed this year, were of questionable quality. Rumors of
\nmoney politics in the House notwithstanding, two House members
\nacknowledged on Tuesday that they had been offered cash to pass
\nthe mining and protected forest bill. Many observers believe that
\nis merely the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n
This is all cause for concern and should be taken into account
\nby the new House members. It is for them to ensure that the new
\nHouse of Representatives will be a true house of the people.<\/p>",
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