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.