The neglected agenda

The neglected agenda

So much to do, and so little time.

This sums up the state of the nation's legislative agenda as
the House of Representatives (DPR) resumed its work this week
after a month-long recess.

House Speaker Akbar Tandjung left no doubt about the
challenges facing the 500 members for the 38 working days ahead,
when he officially opened the latest sitting period on Monday: 53
bills to deliberate, many of them requiring urgent attention.

Many of these bills had been carried over from previous
sittings. Despite their urgent status, the House failed to finish
their deliberations for a variety of reasons: The legislators
could not reach an agreement, the bills required further public
debate, or, in the majority of cases, the bills were simply
neglected because the House members would rather be doing
something else with their time than working on the bills.

The House's track record in its legislative task is appalling.

In 2002, it only completed deliberations on a fifth of all the
bills that came its way, whether they were drafted by House
members or by the government. The number of pending bills have
continued to pile up and have then been passed on to the next
sitting period. Even so, many of the bills that had been approved
could not be implemented because of resistance, meaning that they
had not been deliberated thoroughly with all relevant
stakeholders.

Yet, the success (or failure) of the national reform agenda
hinges, to a large extent, on the nation revamping its laws
properly and quickly to conform with the goal of building this
nation along the lines of a democratic and humane civil society,
and of building stability, peace and prosperity.

If the nation seems to have been stalling in its reform
program, we know that a big part of the problem lies with the
House, whose task it is to enact the necessary legislations.

One urgent issue, for example, is the preparations for the
2004 general elections, something that cannot be started unless
the House completes the deliberation on a number of political
bills.

The House has already endorsed the bill on political parties
and President Megawati Soekarnoputri has duly signed it into law
to allow the parties to make the necessary adjustments.

Still pending, however, is the bill on general elections.

Meanwhile, the government has not even submitted the bill on
direct presidential election and the bill on the composition of
the People's Consultative Assembly, the People's Legislative
Council and the House of Representatives.

This to-ing and fro-ing over the political bills is not only
jeopardizing the preparations of the elections, but it could also
plunge the nation into a constitutional crisis because the
mandate of both the legislative and executive branches could end
in October 2004, with their replacements yet to be elected.

The nation's efforts at economic recovery has also been
delayed in the absence of badly needed legislations, many of
which have been stuck in the many drawers of the House. The
absence of clear laws on labor affairs, for example, have meant
uncertainties for investors to the point of scaring them away.
The end result is that Indonesia has been starved of new
investments and the jobs that they would have generated.

We can all forget about hoping that, with 53 bills to
deliberate in 38 days, the House will finally get its act
together and speed up the deliberations on these legislations.

No sooner had Akbar reminded them of the legislative task, the
House members were already piling up other additional tasks, such
as reviewing its own decisions to approve the government's price
hike policy and the sales of PT Indosat, on top of their own
already overloaded work.

Rather than helping to speed up the reform process, the House
is increasingly looking like the one that is holding back the
national reform agenda.

The legislative branch, which was elected in 1999 on a reform
platform, has now become more of a liability and a disgrace to
the nation. It does not help the fact that the Speaker is a
convicted felon.

Going by the tenor of their public comments, we can all assume
that the minds of most DPR members are anywhere but on the bills
they are supposed to be deliberating. They seem to be far more
concerned about their own positions come 2004.

So much to do in our legislative agenda, so little time to do
it, and so little confidence in the ability of the House.

This nation has been condemned to put up with the present pack
of largely inept political leaders. Like these politicians, the
rest of the nation is also looking to 2004, if only to get rid of
them and elect a new batch of more pro-reform politicians in
their place.