House to draft two bills as lawmaking duty falters

House to draft two bills as lawmaking duty falters

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The House of Representatives has been criticized of late for not
moving fast enough on its lawmaking duties, due to the fact that
it has not passed a single law in nearly a year since its 550
members were installed.

At a plenary session on Tuesday, the House announced two more
bills that were ready for deliberation -- on protection of
witnesses and victims of violence, and on an ombudsman -- after
all 10 factions agreed that the House would use its right to
draft the two bills.

Those two follow four other bills that the House has declared
ready to be, or are currently being, deliberated on with the
government -- on revision of the 2005 state budget, on disaster
mitigation, on a religious court and on teacher welfare.

The House's much-hyped National Legislation Program, which
lists prioritized bills, also seems to have been useless; a sad
irony because it was created for the express purpose of keeping
the House on track with legislation targets, after the last group
of legislators had similar problems.

The program lists 284 bills to be completed during the 2005-
2009 period. For this year alone, the program sets a target of 55
completed bills.

Aside from the first six, five more bills have been drafted by
lawmakers and are waiting for authorization from a House plenary
session. They are on the presidency, the state ministries, a
military court, citizenship and free access to public
information.

After a bill makes it through a plenary session, a copy is
sent to the President who later appoints a ministry as the
House's partner in the deliberation.

This appointment, quite often, is one of the reasons it takes
a longer time to start the deliberation due to lengthy
bureaucratic processes.

House Speaker Agung Laksono has said the House would strive to
meet the specified target although he failed to elaborate.

They started off poorly after being sworn in October last year
due to bitter political bickering among lawmakers grouped into
two rival camps vying for commission seats and leaving all
deliberations stalled for months.

House legislation body chairman Muhammad A.S. Hikam said that
the chances were remote that the 55 bills would be passed this
year. He transferred the blame, however, to the House commissions
and the government, saying they were the ones tasked with
deliberation.

He said the two parties seemed to be waiting for each other to
come up with drafts first. He was quick to add, though, that this
situation did not mean that having a legislation program was
useless.

Poor track records are indeed nothing new for the House. As if
to add insult to the injury, a number of dubious articles in many
laws have also ended up being revised or annulled by the
Constitutional Court.

Many were annulled after judges ruled that they were either in
conflict with other regulations or just plain unconstitutional.

On the latest two bills, all House factions believed the two
were crucial for creating a clean judicial system and good
governance.

A law on the protection of witnesses and victims of violence
is seen as essential to provide safety assurances for people who
are often intimidated, especially in serious cases such as gross
human rights violations and corruption.

While an ombudsman law was thought to be a prerequisite to
give the Ombudsman Commission a stronger legal base, not only to
take public complaints, but also to do help reform the courts and
judges.