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