Rolling out the red carpet for Special Committee on FOIA

Ignatius Haryanto, Campaign Coordinator, Coalition for Freedom of Information Act, Jakarta

The House of Representatives (DPR) in their plenary session announced on Feb. 18 the setting up of its Special Committee on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). It is positive news for several groups in society, since a number of non-governmental organizations have waited for a long time for legislators to discuss the bill.

The DPR adopted the initiative to formulate the bill in March 2002, and it has taken almost a year to step into the next phase of discussing the Freedom of Information Act.

The Coalition for Freedom of Information welcomes the special committee and hopes that members will discuss the bill seriously and open their minds to input from society, as well as the government side.

There have been many obstacles for legislators to discuss the bill, following their completion of the present Broadcasting Law and recent Election Law.

We face several challenges relating to the issue of freedom of information. Society still faces a regime which is inclined toward oppression, which controls most information that it is reluctant to share, so it can easily manipulate the information for its own benefit.

There are many examples to illustrate such reluctance, and in turn we see more and more corruption and bribery. A more serious impact of this situation is that the government is not accountable and transparent in the eyes of the public.

Thus, the freedom of information act is very important for society to monitor government activities and budget spending. This act will ensure that society is heard and can participate in public policy making.

If we look at the recent Transparency International's Global Corruption Report 2003, Indonesia is placed as the seventh most corrupt country among 106 countries surveyed by Transparency International. This rank shows that Indonesia is worse than any other Southeast Asian country, and Indonesia is only slightly better than countries like Kenya, Angola, Madagascar, Paraguay, Nigeria and Bangladesh.

One interesting aspect from this report is that Transparency International this year focused on the issue of Freedom of Information, as part of many vehicles to abolish corrupt practices all over the world. The same report also stated that the mass media has a bigger role to uncover, and eliminate corruption -- although a potential convergence of media groups of international scope is seen as another obstacle to uncover corrupt practices, especially if it relates to big transnational corporations -- observers cite the case of Enron in which the media was considered to have been too upbeat to the extent of being unable to see possible shortcomings.

But at least the media can give the public access to stories about corruption and how the government runs its operations.

Faisal Basri, the noted economist, said that the problem of corruption in Indonesia had already become a problem of civilization, since Indonesia is ranked among the most underdeveloped countries in the world in the context of this corruption issue.

If we look at some recent examples, like the case of price hikes in electricity, oil and water, the government declined to expose its planning and calculations.

On the other hand the government has a plan to subsidize the debts of conglomerates. In short, the government tends to give more subsidies to conglomerates, rather than subsidies for the public in the case of electricity and water rates and oil prices.

Other cases like the price hike in liquid petroleum gas also shows that the state oil company, Pertamina, is very closed in giving information to public. The Indonesian Consumers Foundation (YLKI) sued Pertamina for its price hike in 2001, and the case was still being processed through the courts when again it raised its prices in 2002.

In court, the YLKI lawyer demanded that Pertamina show its written announcement declaring the price increase, but after one year, Pertamina has still resisted this demand, despite a written request from the Ministry of Mining and Energy and the National Ombudsman Council.

In the case of the recently completed election bill, political parties tended to reject control over their sources of finances, and financial audits before and after election day.

This rejection should be looked at carefully, because it can be one way for big conglomerates to collude with political parties to cover up past corruption practices including money laundering. A large part of party income comes from the public, hence it is a must for political parties to be transparent with their voters.

In other cases regarding regional governments, regional leaders have thought that the regional development financial draft plans are a classified document, thus ordinary people cannot access it; and as a consequence the regional councillors can manipulate the document for their own benefit.

Again, a large portion of regional income comes from taxpayers in particular regions, hence it should be their responsibility to be accountable to their supporters. Instead we see that regional councillors "creatively" create an additional budget just to get more income.

All legislators should open their eyes to such facts, and demonstrate their best efforts to eliminate such cases in the future.

People are placing high hopes on this special committee, to ensure that people can access information from public officials so that people can control their performance, and can participate in public policy making. The public, after all, is the major stakeholder in this country.