Matareum blames rules for slow passage of laws
Matareum blames rules for slow passage of laws
JAKARTA (JP): Deputy House Speaker Ismail Hasan Metareum
blames the restrictive internal rules of the House of
Representatives for the slow passage of legislation.
"The regulation that at least two factions of the House must
approve the motion before a bill can be deliberated is a
psychological constraint," he told a seminar on law development
yesterday.
The regulation was initially written to prevent one faction
from dominating all the procedures that the House must go through
to pass a law, he said.
"The problem is, no faction wants to be considered the second
in line to support the draft," he said.
The long process of issuing legislation, as well as the poor
productivity of the House and other institutions in preparing and
producing laws, were the major points of discussion.
The seminar also focused on the criticism that the House
rarely initiates its own legislation.
Metareum and another speaker, Minister of Justice Oetojo
Oesman, however, agreed that more laws should be produced in a
shorter time to keep up with the rapid changes in all sectors.
"I believe we need to issue at least 40 laws a year," said
Metareum.
Metareum also blamed the State Secretariat for taking too long
to process the bills before sending them on to the House for
final deliberation.
"We are often told by ministers that they cannot submit any
draft bills because they are still somewhere at the State
Secretariat," Metareum said.
He conceded that the Secretariat lacks enough personnel to
study all the drafts.
To rectify the problem, he suggested that the ministries allow
their legal experts to be directly involved in the process of
preparing legislation at the National Law Development Body
(BPHN).
The body, which is directly accountable to President Soeharto,
is currently headed by Prof. Sunaryati Hartono.
Only then will the BPHN speed up the process of preparing
draft bills to be submitted to the State Secretariat before they
reach the House, Metareum said.
Attention
Next, Metareum focused his attention on the BPHN itself,
saying that it "must be strengthened in order to enable it to
function as the center of law."
The other participants in the seminar, including former chief
of the Supreme Court, Purwoto Gandasubrata, supported Metareum's
suggestion that every ministry transfer their own legal experts
to the BPHN.
At present, drafts from the BPHN undergo several changes at
the ministry offices and the State Secretariat before they
finally reach the House.
Oetojo said difficulties also arise from the fact that the
ministers themselves often have opinions that differ from the
legal experts employed in their own legislation bureaus.
"Such differences occur because some ministers do not attend
the necessary meetings," he said.
In the discussion yesterday, Metareum denied allegations that
the House was inferior to the executive branch in matters of
legislation.
He justified his opinion by pointing out that the House does
not just docilely accept any legislation submitted to it, and
that the legislators do make changes in government-sponsored
draft bills.
"For instance, the House made many changes in the draft bill
on National Education," he said.
In his speech, Minister Oetojo stressed the importance of
transparency in the legislation system. "We need a more open
legislation system so that we can better meet the public's rising
expectations of the system," he said. (anr)