House Leadership Denies Delaying Election Bill Deliberations

Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Cucun Ahmad Syamsurizal, has denied that the deliberation of the Election Bill with the government is being delayed, despite encouragement from various parties for it to be discussed this year. Cucun has not yet disclosed the reason the House has not formed a Working Committee for the Election Bill in Commission II. He stated that the leadership will discuss the bill in a Deliberative Body meeting in due course. “No, nothing has been postponed. The process is that once it is properly prepared, we will discuss it at the leadership level, then it will be brought to the Deliberative Body,” Cucun said at the parliamentary complex on Thursday (9/7). Cucun also claimed to be unaware of the problem inventory list for the Election Bill, which was reportedly handed over to party chairpersons. He stated that the list should have been submitted by the government to the House before being discussed together. “Why to the political parties? The problem inventory list must be submitted to the House first,” he said. Chairman of House Commission II, Rifqinizamy Karsayuda, previously admitted that he had not yet received the green light from the House leadership to officially begin discussing the revision of Law Number 7 of 2017 concerning Elections. However, Commission II has undertaken a political ijtihad by holding audience meetings with experts and election observers. As a result, the commission has compiled 28 problem inventory items for the bill, which have been submitted to each faction. These meetings and the compilation of the problem inventory list were conducted outside the official procedure for drafting a bill, as formal deliberation should begin with the formation of a working committee before involving the wider public. “We conduct this every two weeks in Commission II of the Indonesian House of Representatives to fulfil meaningful participation as mandated by various Constitutional Court rulings. We took the initiative to compile the problem inventory list,” he said.