House committee split on scope of rules review

JAKARTA (JP): The committee to review the House of Representatives' internal rules entered its second day of deliberations yesterday divided over the scope of its work.

Golkar legislator Syamsul Mu'arif said the committee should leave talks on cutting the number of House commissions to a plenary meeting.

Syamsul, who assumed the gavel for the House rules review committee yesterday from its chairman Soerjadi, said that present members should not try to change the number of commissions.

This was for new House members, who will be sworn in on Oct. 1, to determine, he said.

Armed Forces legislator L.J. Arifin said the committee should try to cover as many issues as possible, including the number of commissions.

Markus Wauran of the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) said the committee was too small to deliberate crucial issues such as the House's internal rules.

The matters should be brought up in an open plenary meeting to allow maximum discussion, he said.

The decision to review the House's internal rules and proceedings came following the PDI's election debacle in May which saw its representation in the House slashed from 52 seats to 11 in the next term which begins in October.

PDI and the other minority party, the United Development Party (PPP), have long demanded changes in the House's internal rules which they said were too restrictive and stifled democracy. Golkar, which has a strong majority in the House, has opposed their demands.

At the center of the debate is the number of commissions in the House. With 11 commissions, the PDI will only be able to field one representative in each commission. This means that should its representative fail to turn up, a commission, under current House rules, could not hold a meeting, let alone make a decision.

Some legislators have suggested merging the House commissions, but others have proposed doing away with the power of House factions by allowing decisions to be made by head counts.

House leaders have given the committee until July 22 to come up with recommendations, hoping that any new rules could be enacted before legislators end their five-year term in September.

Syamsul said yesterday's committee meeting had discussed the schedule, mechanism and scope of its work.

The meeting had made an inventory of issues to be discussed by the committee, he said.

He said the proposals from each faction would be made public before discussions on them begin in earnest on July 10.

Last March, the PPP faction tried to submit a paper on rule changes to the House but it was rejected even before it reached the floor.

PPP legislator Alimarwan Hanan said his faction was proposing to do away with a rule requiring that a commission meeting must be attended by every faction. A quorum based on minimum attendance should suffice, he said.

The faction was proposing that House rules formally stipulate that members work five days a week, something which was already practiced although the rules still recognized a six-day working week, Alimarwan said.

The PPP was also proposing to eliminate the Budgetary Commission and replace it with a committee consisting of representatives from each of the 10 commissions, he said. (39)