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)