Financial shortage likely to hamper sports bill

Financial shortage likely to hamper sports bill

JAKARTA (JP): For nearly a decade now, Indonesia's sporting
community has been waiting for the government to issue a Sports
Law. This remains a dream and will continue as such until members
of the House of Representatives are motivated to undertake the
initiative.

Unfortunately, legislators are not very familiar with sports
development issues and are also facing financial impediments to
drafting the bill and its subsequent enactment as law.

Ferdiansyah, a member of the House's Commission VI for Human
Resources and Religious Affairs, told reporters on Thursday on
the sidelines of a discussion on the sports bill, that
legislators were now facing some restrictions in fulfilling the
task.

"We do not have enough information on national sports so we
will endeavor to gather as much data as possible from the
National Sports Council (KONI), Bapopi (the Indonesian
Professional Sports Association) and members of the sporting
community in formulating the bill. We'll then initiate a
discussion with the government before endorsing it into a law."

"Unfortunately, there is no special allocation to accommodate
the legislator's initiative rights. It's different if the
government handles the issue."

Under a House internal rule, the undertaking to make a draft
must be sponsored by a minimum of 10 legislators from at least
two factions.

Ferdiansyah said he was still unsure if the commission's
members would back up the idea, but he urged sports organizations
to increase legislators' awareness of their activities.

He expressed hope that the bill could be finalized before the
plenary session in August.

"The bill might be finalized in August at the latest and then
we can begin the discussions with the government, sports
community and other House members in September. Hopefully, the
bill can be endorsed by the end of this year."

Ferdiansyah was a keynote speaker in the discussion, along
with political observer Andi Mallarangeng, former shuttler Ferry
Sonneville, and director general of primary and secondary
education of the National Education Ministry Indra Djati Sidi.

The seminar was aimed at collecting information as substance
for the bill. KONI's legal commission will synthesize the
information before submitting it to the House.

A member of KONI's legal commission, Cahyo Adi, said that the
council also faced financial difficulties in communicating the
ideas to 10 factions in the House.

"Socializing this idea to 10 factions will cost us a fortune.
We need to do that because we want to gain support from members.
We will be very grateful if the House can finish the sports bill
by the end of 2001," he said.

KONI and the now-defunct office of State Minister of Youth
Affairs and Sports had submitted the sports bill in the early
1990s to the State Secretariat, to be approved by former
president Soeharto, before being brought into discussion with
other bodies.

But the draft has been suspended at the State Secretariat
until today. Therefore, KONI took the initiative and requested
the House to fulfill the objective.

Speaking on KONI's future, Ferdiansyah said that the council
was under supervision by another organization, along with other
sports bodies. Cahyo Adi added that KONI needs to set up
autonomous bodies in each regency to supervise sports development
once the provinces established their autonomy status early this
year.

Both agree that, in the long-term, KONI should only become a
policy-making body and allow sports organizations under its
supervision to manage sports development. (ivy)