Legislators off to study Cairo despite criticism

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Sixteen legislators plan to leave for the Egyptian capital of Cairo for a "comparative study tour" on how the Egyptian parliament's ways and means committee works, causing critics to claim that the trip was only meant to exhaust remaining funds in the foreign trips budget.

While it's not immediately clear how much money has been designated for this specific trip, which will start on Dec. 11, there remains Rp 10.13 billion (US$1 million), or 67.7 percent of the total budget, of the 2005 overseas travel budget for legislators.

The Cairo trip, which will be carried out by members of the House of Representatives ways and means committee, has raised questions as to whether it was really necessary, since there are yet no clear issues to be addressed, no working programs and no targets to be accomplished for the trip.

"There seems to be no acceptable reasoning for this trip, and there's also no requirement for legislators to draw up a report on what they wish to accomplish, let alone individual reports upon returning home," said committee member Suryama Majana Sastra, who has pulled out of the trip.

It has become a common practice for government departments and House commissions to request too much funding for their annual expenditures, just to find that only half of the budget has actually been spent by the end of the year.

Such actions have adversely affected budget allocations for other sectors, such as agriculture and education.

As the end of the budget year draws near, increasingly more activities are undertaken in order to fully use up unused funds.

The budget for foreign trips for House members in 2004, for example, was only 52.4 percent spent by the end of the year, and it looks likely that this will be repeated this year.

Yet, the 2006 budget for such purposes had been more than doubled from Rp 14.96 billion to Rp 31.46 billion.

"We factored in price and rate fluctuations, as well as living standards in the destinations. But the thing is that the budgets are exaggerated estimations. In practice, they 'forget' that the figures are exaggerated, thus try to spend the entire sum for made-up purposes," said Suryama.

The new figure also includes Rp 986.82 million for foreign trips for the House's disciplinary body. The newly established body did not get any allocations for this purpose in the 2005 budget.

However, it remains unclear why the body, which deals with resolving disputes or cases involving House members, would need to make foreign trips.

In the future, Suryama said, budgets should be drawn up based on programs and competence, with publicly announced objectives.

Upon returning from a trip, legislators normally read a report before the House plenary session on the results of the trip.

Nevertheless, as many legislators themselves have admitted, there is never any obligation or effort to follow up reports with concrete actions, thus most reports end up gathering dust on shelves.

A number of House members were criticized several months ago over a trip to the Netherlands and France. The members were photographed carrying bulky shopping bags filled with branded luxury goods in a department store.