MPR bows to pressure, agrees to discuss constitutional commission
Kurniawan Hari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) ad hoc commission for amendments (Commission A) agreed on Sunday to address public demands for the establishment of a constitutional commission during the ongoing Annual Session.
The agreement was made at a plenary meeting of Commission A led by chairman Jakob Tobing.
"We will include demands for a constitutional commission in the agenda to be deliberated further in this commission," said Jakob.
The agreement was reached following a meeting attended by nine leaders of Commission A and representatives of the 12 factions at the MPR building.
However, it remains unclear whether the commission will be an independent body or a committee subordinated to the MPR.
The setting up of a constitutional commission has been mentioned by several political parties in recent days after the Indonesian Military/National Police (TNI/Polri) faction issued a statement last week. The TNI/Polri faction proposed the establishment of a constitutional commission to correlate conflicting articles in the amended Constitution.
Several factions, including the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI Perjuangan), the National Awakening Party (PKB) and Golkar, came up with a similar idea last year, but the MPR rejected the proposal.
The support of MPR factions for the establishment of a constitutional commission was apparently encouraged by the TNI/Polri proposal.
PDI Perjuangan faction spokesman Didi Supriyanto said on Sunday that his faction would accept and was ready to discuss the idea to form a constitutional commission.
Meanwhile, Lukman Hakim Saifuddin of the United Development Party (PPP) faction demanded that the MPR allocate more time to discuss the proposal.
"The constitutional commission should be discussed after the MPR finalizes the amendment," Lukman said during a meeting of Commission A.
Separately, Golkar's Theo L. Sambuaga said that the MPR would set up a constitutional commission to improve the amendment process.
Theo proposed that the membership of the constitutional commission include representatives from the MPR.
"If membership is restricted to activists and experts, the draft amendments will need to be reviewed by the MPR. On the other hand, if legislators are included in the commission, the MPR will automatically endorse the draft," Theo said, adding that the second alternative would be more efficient.
Theo made the statement in response to a query by law expert Marwan Mas at a hearing with the Coalition for A New Constitution here.
Experts taking part in the hearing included Mochtar Pabottingi of the National Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Saldi Isra of Andalas University, Chusnul Mar'iyah of the University of Indonesia, Daud Busro of Sriwijaya University and Bambang Widjojanto of the Indonesian Legal Aid (LBH).
The coalition has been campaigning for an independent constitutional commission that would outline a brand new constitution. The idea has faced resistance from politicians, indicating that the legislators want to keep their role in the amendment process.
Legislators have insisted that the proposed constitutional commission would serve as nothing more than to correlate articles considered to be contradictory.