House asked to divulge attendance

House asked to divulge attendance

JAKARTA: Frustrated by fellow legislators' poor participation
at meetings in the House of Representatives (DPR), Deputy House
Speaker Tosari Widjaja urged the House Secretariat on Thursday to
disclose the attendance list to the public.

Tosari, from the United Development Party (PPP), said the move
was designed to enable the public to differentiate between inept
and professional legislators.

"The revelation will avoid creating the impression that all
House members do not do their job," Tosari said after
indefinitely delaying a meeting of the House steering committee
(Bamus), which is in charge of drawing up the schedule for
deliberation on bills.

The meeting, which was supposed to discuss the date for the
endorsement of the draft state budget, was called off due to poor
attendance by committee members.

Of the 76 Bamus members, only 36 signed the attendance list
and only 20 were present.

Tosari said that his team always evaluated the attendance of
House members at the end of every meeting. However, the
evaluation had never been published.

He said he hoped publication of the House attendance list
would help improve legislators' performance. -- JP