Legislators' no-show delays anticorruption law revision
Legislators' no-show delays anticorruption law revision
Kurniawan Hari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The House of Representatives failed on Monday to hold its
scheduled plenary meeting as less than half of the total number
of legislators showed up.
The meeting was slated to discuss a proposal on the revision
of Law No.30/2002 on the Anticorruption Commission.
The poor attendance prompted House deputy speaker Soetardjo
Soerjogoeritno to close the meeting and tell the House steering
committee (Bamus) to arrange another time.
"This is very embarrassing," Soetardjo said after bring down
the gavel to cancel the meeting.
Soetardjo opened the meeting at 9:30 a.m. when the number of
legislators present in the auditorium was recorded as 114.
After a delay of more than an hour, the number of legislators
reached 229, which is below the mandatory number of 251.
The plenary meeting was supposed to hear views from the
House's nine factions on the proposed amendment of anticorruption
commission.
The proposed amendments were submitted by 19 cross-party
legislators in January, but many of them have since withdrawn
their support due to instructions from their respective factions.
Tumbu Saraswati of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle
(PDI Perjuangan) faction, who is among those who have withdrawn
their support, said the poor attendance was possibly linked to
disagreement among the legislators.
Tumbu, however, declined to explain what this disagreement
might be.
The proposal to revise the law was spearheaded by legislators
from the United Development Party (PPP) faction.
The PPP faction has rejected the articles in the law that
abolish the Public Servants' Wealth Audit Commission.
The audit commission is chaired by Jusuf Syakir, a senior PPP
member.
Jusuf revealed last week that he and fellow commissioners had
appealed to the Supreme Court (MA) over two conflicting laws --
Law No.30/2002 on the anticorruption commission (KPTPK) and Law
No.28/1999 on the audit commission (KPKPN).
Under Law No.30/2002, the KPKPN is subsumed into the KPTPK.
The move to get rid of the KPKPN is apparently popular among
legislators. The powers of the KPKPN to force the disclosure of
the assets of all public officers, including legislators, had
long been worrying House members.
But, Soetardjo, whose PDI Perjuangan faction has rejected the
proposal, seemed to deny the controversy, saying that the poor
attendance was simply due to personal inadequacies on the part of
legislators.
"This is due to the legislators's poor discipline. We urge the
leaders of the factions and political parties to act resolutely
(against them)," Soetardjo said, while admitting frequent delays
in the holding of House sessions.
Meanwhile, the head of the Session Administration Bureau in
the House secretariat, Subijanto Sudardjo, said that his bureau
always sent attendance lists to each faction, but still poor
attendance was commonplace.
Subijanto added that his team had been calculating and
evaluating the attendance of legislators, and reporting on this
to the House leadership since 1999, but there had been no
significant changes as regards percentage attendance.
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No. Factions Seats Attendance
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1. PDI Perjuangan 152 60
2. Golkar 120 40
3. PPP 58 27
4. PKB 54 24
5. Reform 41 23
6. Military/Police 38 35
7. KKI 12 4
8. PBB 11 9
9. PDU 11 7
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497 229