JP/4/scen07

House asked to divulge attendance

JAKARTA: Frustrated by fellow legislators' poor participation at meetings in the House of Representatives (DPR), Deputy House Speaker Tosari Widjaja urged the House Secretariat on Thursday to disclose the attendance list to the public.

Tosari, from the United Development Party (PPP), said the move was designed to enable the public to differentiate between inept and professional legislators.

"The revelation will avoid creating the impression that all House members do not do their job," Tosari said after indefinitely delaying a meeting of the House steering committee (Bamus), which is in charge of drawing up the schedule for deliberation on bills.

The meeting, which was supposed to discuss the date for the endorsement of the draft state budget, was called off due to poor attendance by committee members.

Of the 76 Bamus members, only 36 signed the attendance list and only 20 were present.

Tosari said that his team always evaluated the attendance of House members at the end of every meeting. However, the evaluation had never been published.

He said he hoped publication of the House attendance list would help improve legislators' performance. -- JP

Court studies review requests

JAKARTA: The Constitutional Court asked on Thursday complainants on laws on political parties, regional administration and elections to complete the necessary documentation before it started to review the legislation.

The complainants were given 14 days to complete their documents before the cases were brought to further hearings.

Erman Umar, a lawyer representing the Defenders of the Struggle for Reform (PPP Reform), asked the Court to declare law No. 31/2002 on political parties invalid because it had treated his clients unfairly.

He said his client, Saleh Khalid, chairman of PPP Reform, had to change the party symbol because the law banned parties from having similar names and symbols.

According to him, PPP Reform was established long before the law was endorsed. Its symbol was similar to Vice President Hamzah Haz' United Development Party (PPP).

The court also studied a public request to review Law No.12/2003 on elections.

A group of people said a legal restriction on members of the outlawed Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) was a violation of human rights as set out in the Constitution.

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JP/4/scen7

House starts to discuss eight bills

JAKARTA: Of the 54 bills targeted for deliberation in the House of Representatives (DPR) this session, only eight are currently in the process of deliberation by House committees.

The eight are bills on a mechanism to produce legislation, water resources, the 2004 state budget, Bank Indonesia, the state financial audit, settlement of industrial disputes, revision of the law on foundations and on a truth and reconciliation commission.

The House has not started deliberating other bills because it has not even established committees to discuss them or still awaits a response from President Megawati Soekarnoputri.

"I think the House will be able to finish fewer than 10 bills this session. It is impossible to complete 54 bills this session," said Baharuddin Aritonang, a member of the House Legislation Body (Baleg) here on Thursday.

He was responding to a statement from House Speaker Akbar Tandjung to his opening remark on Oct. 27 that the House would discuss 54 bills in the session from Oct. 27 through Dec. 19.

Aritonang said it was not unusual to see a discrepancy between the expectation and reality. --JP

Reform produces greedy politicians

JAKARTA: The five-year reform process has produced nothing but a political elite that is hungry for power, a political analyst has said.

J. Kristiadi of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said in Magelang, Central Java, on Thursday that the reform process had produced a political elite lusting for power, projects and foreign trips.

He said the political elite had abused its power in becoming involved in uncontrolled collusion.

The political elite had also produced regulations that would ensure political power remained in its hands.

Kristiadi took the law on elections as an example. The law allows people to vote for a political party, but disqualifies those who vote for a candidate by name.

Such a regulation, he said, would enable politicians who were loyal to a party but not to the public to become legislators.

He said that allowing state officials to join election campaigns was unfair. - Antara