Return (police bill) to sender

Was there anything conspiratorial in the way the House of Representatives and the government endorsed the bill on the National Police last week? It certainly looks that way.

Here is a bill whose final passage was blocked at the very last minute in October because of protests that it would give both the National Police and the president unchecked powers. Under strong public pressure, both the House and the government deferred the bill's endorsement, and promised to review and publicize it once more before enacting the legislation.

Virtually nothing has been heard about the bill since then, with most of us assuming the House and the government were working on it, taking into account the objections raised. Then, without any prior warning or open discussion by the House, let alone a public debate, the factions in the House unanimously endorsed the document last Monday.

The final version of the bill has remained largely unchanged from the version we saw in October. The chief concern then, that the legislation would give the President and the National Police almost unlimited powers, has not been addressed at all.

The bill calls for the establishment of a National Police commission, but its role will be limited to being advisory to the president. This commission could hardly be expected to play the role of watchdog to prevent abuses of power, since its members are elected by the president.

With the National Police chief reporting directly to the president, the picture is complete for the creation of a police state in Indonesia, if the power-holders so desired.

Some politicians tried to allay fears about the lack of accountability of the police and the president in exercising their powers under the bill. But theirs is only one way of interpreting the bill. Others could interpret it differently. What we need is a complete rewording of the articles on the accountability that leaves little or no room for interpretation.

If the bill, in its present form, were signed into law, the police would become nothing more than the personal tool of the president. Without any democratic checks-and-balances mechanism, this law could become a potent weapon in the wrong hands.

We don't need to go back to the Soeharto years to look for an example of how a president could or would abuse his power in using the police to serve his own political ambitions.

President Abdurrahman Wahid ordered in July the National Police leadership to arrest his political opponents as he struggled to fight off impeachment. The police defied the order and got away without being charged with insubordination, thanks to the ambiguity of the existing law. If the current police bill had already been law at that time, the National Police leadership would have had no choice but to carry out the arrest order.

While we can take heart that Abdurrahman is no longer in power, it is hardly comforting that the National Police bill, if enacted, is open to legitimate abuse by any president, present or future.

This takes us back to the question about the way the House and the government conspired to ensure the bill's passage: Why the rush? What is so urgent that the bill could not wait until after a public debate? Is there a hidden political agenda on the part of the government, the House, or the National Police?

As urgent as the need is for a law regulating the work of the police, especially in view of their formal separation from the Indonesian Military, the House and the government are wrong to assume that the public would accept any new law uncritically.

This is another piece of legislation that has not been fully thought out or subjected to a thorough public debate, with all its consequences. We seem to be getting a lot of these lately.

If President Megawati Soekarnoputri signs the bill on the National Police into law in its present version, she would put us back exactly where we were in 1998, before the reform era.

As noble as the intention may be in wanting to give the National Police a solid legal footing from which to work effectively, the President should send the bill back to the House and demand that it insert clauses that preclude abuse and ensure greater accountability.

After all, that is what reform is all about, isn't it?