House seeks pay increase despite poor form

House seeks pay increase despite poor form

Tony Hotland
The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

They come, stay a while, murmur a few words, laugh, leave and get
paid.

A few of the House of Representatives lawmakers do raise their
voices and deliver critical points, but most of the time they are
overshadowed by a host of others who are busy with their cellular
phones and cigarettes, or just taking a comfortable nap.

Some ask questions during hearing sessions, but then check out
of the room before an answer is produced.

Some arrive ridiculously late, at times just as a session is
wrapping up, just to sign the attendance list.

Those who fail to turn up for scheduled meetings are often not
in their offices because they are either out of the city or the
country, sometimes on business unrelated to their job.

Quite recently, Fridays have stopped being a workday, although
their own regulations say otherwise. Fridays are officially
designated for lawmakers to engage with their respective
factions, perhaps to discuss various important issues.

The 550 House members have on their hands 55 bills that are
scheduled to be completed this year, which increasingly appears
unlikely to happen. These 55 bills are among 284 drafts scheduled
for completion by the end of the lawmakers' term in 2009.

To date, eight months after their inauguration, the lawmakers
have only passed the revision of the 2005 state budget, which
happened last week.

They just began the deliberation of a sports bill last week,
while other crucial bills are only in the early stages of
deliberation. All of this work will come to a pause when the
House begins its scheduled month-long recess starting July 8.

House Speaker Agung Laksono stands by his promise that the
legislative body will finish deliberating and pass the 55 bills
this year.

As well they might, given that the House Secretariat recently
completed a proposal to raise the salaries of lawmakers by over
100 percent.

There is also a proposal to give legislators bigger
allowances, for the purpose of helping the lawmakers spend more
time with their constituents across the country.

A final proposal says House members will be provided with an
additional Rp 15 million (US$1,560), deputy speakers Rp 22
million and the speaker Rp 30 million for unspecified
"operational work".

The House Secretariat says most of the additional money will
be for allowances for trips and services, which in theory should
be reimbursed only after the job is done.

The proposal, however, lumps these allowances into the
lawmakers' fixed take-home pay.

Legislators recently said their "poor performance" was largely
the result of their "low" salaries, which left them with little
money to take business trips or rent hotel conference rooms to
draft bills.

Several others say larger allowances are necessary to hire
experts to assist them in their legislative function.

Tommy Legowo from the legislative watchdog Formappi supports
efforts to fairly compensate lawmakers, but warns against giving
them more cash in the form of allowances.

"If they receive cash, who knows what they will spend it on. I
support the idea of improving their welfare but only if it is
tied to efforts to enhance their performance, but the money
should be properly allocated," he said on Saturday.

Tommy, who is a researcher at the Centre for Strategic and
International Studies, said lawmakers had been making progress
compared to their predecessors in terms of their critical
outlook.

"But there are still moments where they engage in debates that
are not substantial but only concern procedural issues," he said.