Rights campaigner fails to get into Komnas HAM

Kurniawan Hari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The House of Representatives' Commission II on legal affairs selected on Monday 23 out of 41 candidates for membership of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), with some former members being included on the list.

Surprisingly, rights campaigner and noted lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis was not on the list of the candidates who were qualified to join the commission in the opinion of the House opinion.

A member of Commission II, Syaiful Rachman, revealed that the legislators applied a scoring system in selecting the candidates.

"The lowest score is 22 and Pak Todung obtained a score of only 21. So we disqualified him," Syaiful told The Jakarta Post here.

According to Syaiful, a candidate's score represented the amount of support he had received from the legislators.

Topping the list was Mansour Fakih, director of the Yogyakarta-based Institute for Social Transformation (Insist), while Soelistyowati Soegondo, a former member of the commission, was at the bottom.

Mansour and Soelistyowati won the support of 41 and 23 legislators respectively.

Syaiful added that the list of qualified candidates would soon be submitted to President Megawati Soekarnoputri, who would then formally appoint them

The recruitment process for the commission members is mandated by Law No.39/1999 on human rights. This law stipulates that the House should select 35 candidates for appointment to the national commission.

However, some legislators hinted that they would not try to meet the target because only about half of the 41 candidates were qualified in the legislators' opinion.

Initially, the House received 43 nominations, but two of them -- legislator Aisyah Aminy and Komnas HAM member Bambang W. Soeharto -- withdrew their candidacies for unknown reasons.

The 23 qualified candidates (figures in brackets indicate their scores): Mansour Fakih (41), Solahuddin Wahid (41), Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara (39), Habib Chirzin (39), Mohammad Farid (36), Koesparmono Irsan (36), M.M. Billah (35), Zoemrotin K. Susilo (35), Chandra Setiawan (34), Said Nisar (33), Enny Soeprapto (32), Taheri Noor (32), Safroedin Bahar (32), Samsuddin (31), Anshari Thoyib (31), Amidhan (31), Djoko Sugianto (29), Hasto Atmojo Suroyo (28), Achmad Ali (27), Rusmiati Suryasaputra (27), Yuwaldi (25), Hasballah M. Saad (24), Soelistyowati Soegondo (23).