M. Taufiqurrahman, Jakarta – A bill aimed at outlawing racial and ethnic discrimination has gained a new lease on life, with members of the House of Representatives special committee resisting attempts to kill it off.
Deputy committee chairman Mufid Busyairi of the National Awakening Party (PKB) said efforts to derail the bill have been met with strong resistance from committee members.
Last month, the same group of lawmakers decided to halt discussions on the bill, bowing to a suggestion from the House legal division that numerous existing laws already regulated the issue. "A number of committee members have steadfastly opposed efforts to drop the bill," Mufid told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
Mufid said the lawmakers' opposition would make a difference only if a House plenary session agreed with their recommendation to pursue the bill's deliberation. "It is the House plenary session that has the final say on whether or not the bill will continue being deliberated," he said.
The committee is also awaiting a reply from a letter it wrote to the Justice and Human Rights Ministry asking the government to appoint representatives to discuss the bill.
In the most recent committee meeting, a number of lawmakers, including those from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) faction and the Democrat Party, spoke out emotionally against a proposal to drop the bill.
One lawmaker went further by alleging a conspiracy to kill off the discussion of the bill. A number of institutions including the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) and the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) have dismissed the significance of adopting a new law to outlaw ethnic and racial discrimination.
Komnas HAM was concerned that the bill, if passed into law, would diminish its role in hearing complaints concerning discrimination cases. The MUI has alleged that the bill would favor Indonesia's minority groups.
A study by the House legal division found the bill's provisions overlapped with articles in the existing law on human rights as well as numerous stipulations of United Nations covenants already ratified by Indonesia.
Advocates of the bill, on the other hand, have stressed the importance of a separate law against discrimination. "We need a unified law to tackle all types of discrimination. The existing regulations are still not enough," Swandy Sihotang of the Indonesian Movement Against Discrimination (Gandi) said.