Lawmakers Setting Aside Time to Legislate

Jakarta Globe, Anita Rachman & Armando Siahaan, June 25, 2010

The House of Representatives says it is setting aside two days of the working week to deliberate legislation, having failed to pass a single bill into law since their term began last October. (Antara Photo)

Marzuki Alie, speaker of the House of Representatives, said on Thursday that two days of the working week would be devoted to deliberating legislation once the body returns to session on July 19 after a monthlong recess.

“Wednesday and Thursday will be focused on drafting out deliberations over legislation,” Marzuki said. “This is our strategy to cover all the House’s functions.”

Having failed to pass a single bill into law since their term began in October, the same month President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono embarked on his second stint in office, the House is hoping to pass at least 17 priority bills by the end of this year. Initially they had a goal of approving 70 bills, with 36 drafted by the House and the remainder coming from the government.

“It has become our concern that all bills, at least those initiated by the House, must be finished this year. I am pretty sure that by the end of 2010 all those bills will be passed,” Marzuki said.

Ignatius Mulyono, chairman of the House Legislation Body, pointed out late last month that with lawmakers spending far more time on monitoring the government than legislating, the House would “have to make do” with passing just 17 bills into law this year.

Ignatius also signaled his frustration on how it was very difficult “to tell lawmakers to do their jobs of legislating these days.”

The Democratic Party lawmaker added that through the end of May, the House had forwarded just six bills to the plenary screening sessions, including a long-awaited protocol bill.

House Deputy Speaker Pramono Anung, from the Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle (PDI-P), said that legislating would be more effective in the next sitting session, following the House recess.

“We realize and are aware that the process for us to legislate is not going very well. Hopefully with the next session, lawmakers do make use of these two days, Wednesday and Thursday, to work on legislating,” Pramono said, adding that it was time for lawmakers to start concentrating on actually making laws, as it was one of their three main responsibilities — to legislate, monitor the government and work on the budget.

“I believe that if we can pass 40 bills into law, it would be an extraordinary achievement,” Pramono said. “The special [two] days are needed because lawmakers need time to study content [of bills] by academics. And learning from previous experiences, sometimes there is an overlap of duties with both the House and regional legislative councils discussing the same bills.”

Pramono said that the overlap could be avoided through close discussion during the days set aside each week, adding that the time could also be used by members of each House commission to coordinate.

He added that the House would collaborate with the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights to complete all bills proposed by the government.

Ignatius welcomed the new policy.

“This is what we at the legislation body were waiting for. Without actually allocating time focused just for legislation, we would have great difficulty in achieving our year-end target,” he said on Thursday, adding that the House’s goal was to complete the drafting of the bills by the end of July.

In the upcoming plenary session, Ignatius hopes each commission can finalize at least two draft bills. He said he also hoped that all bodies in the House take the policy seriously, so that it can properly fulfil its responsibility to legislate.