Expressing old hopes

One thousand new members of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) and House of Representatives (DPR) will be sworn in today by the chief justice.

Every five years, when this event takes place, the public starts asking whether the two legislative bodies, especially the House, have carried out their constitutional duties as they once swore to do.

As the MPR, the country's highest law-making body, will only meet in March, attention has naturally focused on the House. The scrutiny is justifiable because the new legislators always promise at the swearing-in ceremony to assume a vigorous role in the country's political system.

Exactly five years ago today, legislators from both the government and non-government factions did the same thing.

It is the same old story -- the public has been complaining again about the legislators' perceived timidity in using their constitutional rights to voice the people's aspirations. And, more tragic still, our general election system -- in which the voters choose a political group rather than a representative -- has left voters in the dark about their position.

More and more people are registering their complaints with the National Commission on Human Rights instead of the House. If the situation was the other way around, many of the riots which hit this country last year could have been avoided.

Some legislators have defended themselves and denied the accusations, saying they articulated the people's wishes. They did not just rubber-stamp all the government-sponsored bills but passed them after long deliberations and sometimes heated debates.

But debating an issue is not enough. The people expect them to do more. Although the democratic system has been applied differently throughout the world, the most generally accepted standard is that a House of Representatives has to be able to sponsor its own bills. This has not been the case here during the last three decades.

This constitutional activity is, in fact, not new here. When the country experimented with liberal democracy, between 1950 and 1959, the parliament sponsored many bills. Now there are hurdles.

But every five years new legislators promise to work hard to eliminate the hurdles. To date the House's internal rules, which have been blamed for its failure to sponsor any bills, are still there.

A bill proposed by a political faction will be considered only if it is supported by at least 25 legislators from more than one faction. In practice it has been highly unworkable. Many years ago the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) complained that when it offered a draft law on business competition, the Golkar faction refused to support the initiative because it did not want to play second fiddle.

This weakness has allowed the administration to show its political muscle by issuing more regulations concerning the people's basic interests, which should be deliberated in the House.

We have discussed this problem so many times yet we still do not know when these undemocratic rules will be removed and the legislators will be able to put the people's interests above all others. There is no hope of change if the House members sworn in today are the same as their predecessors.

The same question remains: when will God bless this nation and allow citizens to see their representatives enjoying their constitutional rights?

Perhaps, as a noted political observer once put it, there is no way until a solid middle class emerges in this country. And this, he said, will not take place in the next 10 years.