New DPR: A new broom or just the same old crowd?

New DPR: A new broom or just the same old crowd?

Stephen Sherlock, Jakarta

In this long interregnum between the election of the new House
of Representatives (DPR) in April and its swearing in at the end
of September, it seems timely to raise the question of how clean
and effective the new legislature will be when it finally begins
its work.

The current DPR has become notorious for slowness in passing
bills, poor attendance by members and general inattention to
work. Like other institutions of state in Indonesia, it is seen
by the public as prone to corruption. Will the new DPR be just
the same?

In terms of membership at least, the new DPR will be quite
different from that elected in 1999. The most obvious feature is
the very large influx of new members. Of the 550 members, 400
(73 percent) will be entering the DPR for the first time. This is
partly because the DPR was increased in size from 500 to 550 (a
19 percent increase) and because 38 seats for unelected
representatives from TNI/POLRI were replaced with elected
members.

But in addition to the effects of this institutional change,
the 2004-2009 assembly will be very different from the previous
DPR because there was a very high turnover of members. Of the 462
elected members of the old DPR, only 150, or 32 percent, were re-
elected.

The influx of new members could have its good side and bad
side. On the negative, the new members will be inexperienced in
terms of legislative procedure, including the process of passing
laws. Indeed the legislative process has just been changed in a
new law passed in May 2004, so even returned DPR members may be
unfamiliar with procedures.

The demanding work in commissions and special committees
often requires a great deal of technical knowledge that cannot be
acquired overnight. The absence of such knowledge in the 1999 DPR
was one of the reasons for its poor performance.

Thinking positively, however, it is to be hoped that amongst
the new arrivals at Senayan will be a large number of people with
a real policy agenda and a sense of mission and service. This
would be a refreshing change from the ethos of self-interest that
seems to motivate many members now.

This will only happen if the parties learn from the
experience of the electoral losses suffered by Indonesian
Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and other incumbent parties
and show real determination to discipline their members. But will
this actually happen when the processes for selecting DPR
candidates within most parties have been so variable in quality?

Of course, the influx of new members is not uniform across the
parties and this raises many questions about what this might mean
for the DPR. For example, all but three of the members from
Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) are new to the DPR.

The PKS has gained a reputation for tight discipline and a
clean record, so all eyes will be on the party to see if its
members act more cleanly, conscientiously or effectively than
other members. And, if so, will that make any difference to the
overall character of the DPR?

All 57 of the newly elected members from Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono's Democrat Party are new, but the way that this party
will operate in the DPR is a much more open question,
particularly if Susilo becomes President.

What of National Awakening Party (PKB) and United Development
Party (PPP)? The great majority of their members are new because
most of the members of these parties were not re-elected. Was
this because of their incompetence and corruption, or just
because they fell out of favor with the party bosses?

The party with the largest number of experienced members is
Golkar. 62 of its 128 members in the new DPR serve in the current
legislative assembly and will therefore represent the largest
pool of experience and corporate knowledge. And it was Golkar
that was by far the most effective political organization in the
1999 DPR.

It seems likely that the new DPR will be even more dominated
by Golkar than was the old. PDI-P, despite its huge losses, has
47 experienced members from the 1999 DPR. But will this party
prove itself to be any more effective than the factionalised,
poorly organized and coordinated body that it was in the old DPR?

A legislature must have the power to legislate. This seems so
obvious that it hardly needs to be mentioned and, indeed, article
20 of the 1945 Constitution was recently amended to state
specifically that the DPR has the power to make laws.

But the same Article also says that the President and the DPR
must reach "joint approval" (setuju bersama) before a bill can
become law. And Article 37 of the new law on the DPR's
legislative procedures states that a bill must receive "joint
approval" before it can be sent to the President for his/her
signing.

This clearly gives the government the capacity to stop any
bill from being passed through the DPR unless the government
approves it. This is an effective veto at the bureaucratic and/or
ministerial level, long before the question of presidential veto
ever arises. The DPR is still not an independent legislative
body.

A legislature must have sufficient financial resources and
organizational independence to do its job. The DPR, however, is
still a relatively impoverished institution, even though some of
its members may be very rich indeed. The DPR today receives only
slightly more funds to act as a democratic, accountable and
representative institution as it received when it was a rubber
stamp under the New Order.

No democratic legislature in the modern world can operate
without a large amount of information, support and advice from
in-house expertise. But the DPR has a paucity of such resources
and what is available is poorly organized and managed.

The DPR Secretariat requires a complete organizational
overhaul, but the secretary general does not have the final say
over hiring and firing of staff and the terms and conditions of
their employment. The Secretariat is still ultimately under the
control of the government bureaucracy, yet another legacy of the
DPR's subordination to the President inherited from the New
Order.

But internally, the DPR itself still operates with procedures
that are designed to keep its members from being held accountable
to the electorate. A basic principle of democratic decision-
making is voting, a procedure which, in the case of a
legislative, ensures that every member's voice is counted and
every member's intention is clear.

A vote forces a member to take a clear public stand on an
issue. Records of the votes of members and their parties are a
key part of holding members accountable to the people.

In the DPR, however, votes are rarely taken and decisions are
made by so-called consensus (musyawarah), a process that allows
parties and politicians to hide their actions from the people.
Key decisions about legislation or about issues involving the
oversight of executive government are held behind closed doors.

The public can never know what stand their representatives
took. Most consultations with outside interests, such as private
corporations, NGOs or lobby groups, take place in closed session
and with no detailed records kept.

Soon a new DPR will convene and the great majority of its
members will sit for the first time. If those members are to
become agents of reform and not obstacles to change, they will
need to tackle some basic questions about the power, independence
and performance of the DPR.

Dr Stephen Sherlock is a senior governance consultant at the
UN Support Facility for Indonesian Recovery (UNSFIR), a joint
BAPPENAS-UNDP project. The views expressed here are his personal
opinions and are not the official position of UNSFIR.