Scholar urges empowering of House of Representatives

Scholar urges empowering of House of Representatives

JAKARTA (JP): The House of Representatives should be empowered
with the authority to hold cabinet ministers responsible for any
mismanagement, a scholar proposed yesterday.

Nurcholish Madjid said it was high time there was a mechanism
for holding cabinet ministers publicly accountable for what they
do, including any misconduct or mismanagement of their
departments.

"I suggest the control mechanism be the House of
Representatives," he said at a discussion held by the Center for
Information and Development Studies.

In the United States, the President, the parliament and
Congress, all have the authority to control and hold ministers
accountable for their actions.

Nurcholish said it might be a good idea if ministers, who
failed to fulfill expectations, resigned from their posts.

In support of Nurcholish's opinion, legal expert Baharuddin
Lopa cited practices in Britain, where parliament could dismiss
cabinet ministers for failing to do their job.

The performance of the Indonesian cabinet ministers has been
under public scrutiny following reports that the Minister of
Mines and Energy I.B. Sudjana had ordered a transfer of funds
from state-owned coal mining company PT Tambang Batubara Bukit
Asam into his personal bank account.

As House members grilled him over the transfer, President
Soeharto declared the transfer of the coal funds would be
returned to the rightful owner and that the minister had come out
clean.

In January, Minister of Transportation Haryanto Dhanutirto was
also cleared of alleged corruption after the President declared
there had been "administrative" mistakes on the part of the
minister.

Nurcholish said a stronger House of Representatives would
improve the government's performance.

"Currently, the House is unable to properly perform its
supervision duties because members represent their respective
political organizations rather than the people," he said.

It is close to impossible to expect they will be able to
control government officials because the House is dominated by
the government's Golkar faction, according to Nurcholish.

"They cannot reveal the truth behind what they have see and
hear," he said.

Nurcholish is well-known as an ardent critic of the
proportional system in the general election, in which people vote
for political organizations.

He reiterated his proposal yesterday for the system to be
replaced with a 'district" system in which people vote for the
figures they believe would best defend their interests.

The district system, he argued, would ensure House members
were committed to defending their voters rather than the
political organizations they were affiliated to.

"Under the district system, it is the people who have the
authority to dismiss a House member they think is incompetent,"
he said. (imn)