Truant House members escape punishment

Kurniawan Hari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The House of Representatives disciplinary committee announced on Tuesday that at least 10 members from four factions have been found to be in violation of the legislature's code of ethics for frequent their abstentions.

However, the committee said the violators would not face any punishment as most of them may not have been informed of the newly enacted code of ethics.

Committee chairman Slamet Effendy Yusuf instead urged the four factions to reprimand the truant legislators.

The 10 legislators had skipped three consecutive meetings without requesting leave of their factions during the period Oct. 1 to Dec. 10 last year, he said.

Slamet said his committee would not impose any penalty, arguing that the legislators may not have known about the House's new internal regulations enacted in October last year.

"We have agreed to consider House sessions between Oct. 1 and Dec. 10 as a transitional period."

"We will enforce the code of ethics effectively starting this session," Slamet said, referring to the session that opened on Monday.

He refused to identify the 10 legislators, only saying that one of them was a woman.

Under Article 6 of the new code, House members are obliged to attend every parliamentary meeting. Those failing to attend meetings three times consecutively without the permission of their faction would be charged with violating the code.

Penalties for violators range from warnings to dismissal from the House.

The House set up a permanent disciplinary committee in October last year in an effort to boost the performance of its members.

Poor discipline of legislators in past years was partly blamed for the House's failure to meet its targets in enacting laws.

Lawmakers have defended themselves by claiming that they often skipped House meetings because they had to attend House commission meetings, or attend committee meetings deliberating bills or specific issues.

In many cases, legislators come to a House session and sign the attendance list, but then move on to meetings outside the session.

In the past the House has often failed to achieve a quorum for plenary sessions due to very high numbers of abstentions.

Poor discipline on the part of legislators had also been blamed for the frequent failures of the House's steering committee (Bamus) to discuss the legislature's agenda.

Slamet vowed that the disciplinary committee would begin imposing strict penalties on those violating the code of ethics in the next sessions.

The committee is planning to draft legal procedures to process violations of the code of ethics, he added.