House legislation committee wants more money for bill deliberation

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The House of Representatives' legislation unit is asking for more money to support its task as the lawmaking body, so it can deliberate on and pass more bills next year.

The body expects the House to deliberate on 77 bills next year, including 34 from the 2005 priority list currently in process, and has vowed not to fail as it did this year.

The House listed 55 bills for deliberation this year, but so far less than 15 that have been passed into law.

One of the reasons, the legislation body argued, was the limited financial resources to help speed up the law drafting process and to hire experts as legal drafters.

Legislative body deputy chairman Bomer Pasaribu from the Golkar Party said on Tuesday that they were asking for Rp 30.5 billion (US$3 million) to process 35 bills being drafted by the House, and Rp 36.2 billion for 55 being drafted by the government.

These figures are still estimates, he said, but added that there would be more bills from the list to be proposed for deliberation.

Previously, Bomer said, the legislation body was allocated Rp 7.3 billion to process 55 bills.

The government, in this case the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, meanwhile has between Rp 1.5 billion and Rp 3 billion allocated for each bill.

Such a wide gap, the body admits, has made it dependent on the government to finance the deliberation process and easily give way to many of the government's proposals.

"This is confusing because the House has now been tasked to become the law center," he said.

The proposed budget would be used to hire experts to draft the bills according to their expertise, said legislation body head F.X. Soekarno, from the Democrat Party.

"We need about 15 experts to assist us in major areas like politics, economics, law, etc. Right now we basically only have four experts available," he said.

Soekarno said that having these experts was essential to help ensure the quality of the laws to prevent them from later being annulled by the Constitutional Court.

Another problem they said was limited time given to members, who are also part of commissions in the House.

This, they claimed, has exhausted their time and energy to be able to concentrate on their legislative function.

Among the prioritized bills are those on ratifications of international conventions on transnational organized crimes, on human trafficking, on corruption and on the suppression of the financing of terrorism.

For table:

Selected bills on priority for deliberation in 2006: 1. On criminal code 2. On immigration 3. On state secrecy 4. On narcotics 5. On insurance ventures 6. On capital market 7. On public service 8. On state intelligence 9. On electricity 10. On natural resource management 11. On investment 12. On worker's social security 13. On illegal logging 14. On currency 15. On industry