Will House try to improve its image?

Will House try to improve its image?

JAKARTA (JP): Since Soeharto resigned from the presidency on
May 21, many have jumped on the bandwagon of political opening,
contributing opinions or actions to make a change for the better.

Can legislators of the House of Representatives, bearing the
decades-old image of being the government's rubber stamp, make a
difference too? Skepticism looms but there is a glimmer of hope.

Legislators, observers and activists have pointed to a few
opportunities that now lie open to the House to improve its
image: rejection of a government regulation in lieu of a law on
freedom of expression (Perpu 2/1998), and the issuance of a law
ensuring fair and free elections.

Sutradara Ginting of the Golkar faction said in hearing last
Tuesday that both issues are "test cases" for legislators to make
a "respectable exit" after the elections, which are slated for
May 1999, and after which new members would enter the House.

The hearing discussing the regulation, at Commission I
for security and defense, politics, law and information, involved
representatives from National Police Headquarters, the
Association of Indonesian Catholic Students (PMKRI) and the
private Institute of Policy Research and Advocacy (Elsam).

At the House's second reading of Perpu 2/1998 on Sept. 17,
Golkar, along with the Armed Forces faction, decided to accept to
deliberate it further; the United Development Party faction was
the only one to reject it. The government-recognized Indonesian
Democratic Party faction said it neither rejected nor supported
it.

Ginting complained that as an individual legislator he had no
say in rejecting Perpu 2/1998. "The say is with the faction," he
said. In a similar tone, another Golkar legislator said: "Our
conscience rejected the regulation."

According to the House's internal rule, a legislator only has
the right to ask questions but factions have the last say.
However, in the House's internal rule on decision-making process,
voting is possible -- theoretically.

Should there be a secret ballot in future decision-making on
the regulation, Ginting predicted the outcome would likely be to
reject Perpu 2/1998.

In the last and only decision-making in the House through
voting, on Sept. 17, which was on candidates for the chairmanship
of the Supreme Audit Board, voting was done by requiring members
to stand up for their preferred candidate -- after which Golkar
members were questioned by their faction leaders. "With a voting
method like that, no one would dare (to oppose the faction),"
Ginting said.

Given such helplessness of faction members, the public has
been generally apathetic about the House, but the many recent
demonstrations held there raising various demands point to
exactly the opposite, an activist said in the hearing.

Riza Primahendra, chairman of PMKRI, said that PMKRI was among
those who still had "a little trust" in the House.

In the case of Perpu 2/1998, drafted by the Ministry of
Defense and Security, the House, Riza said, could contribute an
"elegant" role by rejecting it.

Among the regulation's controversial articles are those
stating that demonstrations should be limited to 50 people and
that such actions need a police permit. Police permits regulated
in clause 9 refers to all forms and methods of conveying
expression to the public in clause 8, which includes media
coverage. This has led to the interpretation that media coverage
of a demonstration would also need a police permit.

Minister of Justice Muladi has argued that a large part of the
regulation actually defends human rights, including the right to
security in the midst of so many "uncontrolled" demonstrations
these days.

But Muladi, a former member of the National Commission for
Human Rights, also said that it would be "no problem" if the
House rejected it, provided it had good reason to do so.

Elsam and PMKRI submitted to Commission I what they said were
solid reasons to reject the regulation: one was that the
government's argument justifying the issuance of a government
rule in lieu of law -- that Indonesia was in a state of emergency
-- was wrong.

Among 19 conditions entailed to a country's state of
emergency, as cited by Elsam director, lawyer Abdul Hakim Garuda
Nusantara, the first was an official proclamation by the
President of such a situation, which, he pointed out, did not
happen before the announcement of Perpu 2/1998.

According to the 1945 Constitution's article 22, "a condition
of pressing importance", interpreted by many as a state of
emergency, justifies the government's issuance of a regulation in
lieu of a law if endorsed by the House.

Ginting said now was the House's chance to play the strategic
role of dropping the regulation, besides carefully deliberating
the political laws next month.

The laws -- the structure and position of the People's
Consultative Assembly/House of Representatives and the regional
legislature and political parties, besides the elections, -- were
scheduled by the government to enter public debate at the House
early this month but it has been delayed until October.

Ginting warned that if the House failed to produce the widely
expected outcome, the image of the House would be shattered once
and for all.

"Golkar must change its paradigm from being a ruler's party to
become a real ruling party," Ginting later told The Jakarta Post.
(aan)