Tony Hotland, Jakarta – Planned laws on state secrecy and intelligence should include multiple oversight mechanisms and limitations on their scope to maintain the country's commitment to its hard-earned democracy, observers said Wednesday.
The deliberation of the laws, they said, would require significant attention from the public – represented by civil groups and the media – as a failure to do so could see the return of a restrictive regime like that under Soeharto's 32-year reign. During the dictator's New Order era, the freedom of speech was limited as was accessibility to public information, while the unbridled operation of intelligence units led to the coercive stifling of dissenting opinions.
Though still tentative, two intelligence bill drafts drawn up by the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) have attracted criticism for seeking the power to arrest "suspicious" individuals and purchase weapons, including from unscrutinized financial sources.
The state secrecy bill, currently facing the House of Representatives, seeks to exempt various types of information from public access and is seen as counterintuitive to the concept of transparency with civil groups expecting the devil to be in the details.
"Intelligence aims to gather information to be used by the main decision maker, the President, to avoid strategic surprises against the state's security," said Kusnanto Anggoro of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) during a discussion.
He said BIN's chosen approach was to strengthen itself as an institution by increasing its authority and cutting external oversight, not by enhancing its main function of information collection.
"Thus a multi-layered oversight mechanism is very crucial. There should be oversight at the internal level by the ministry that (BIN) operates under, by parliament and by the public. This is where an ombudsman agency and the media check in," Kusnanto said.
Based on presidential instruction, intelligence units were placed under BIN's wing after the 2002 Bali bombings. Last year, Home Minister Moh. Ma'ruf issued a ministerial decree reinstating regional intelligence units.
Legislator Djoko Susilo of House Commission I for defense and information agreed that if excessive authority was given to intelligence units and the information they gathered became unavailable for access, then it would pave the way back to a "closed regime".
"But the thing I must come clean about is that many lawmakers in the commission know absolutely nothing about these issues. Each faction recently submitted a list of identified problems in the state secrecy bill and all they came up with were typo mistakes or wording problems but not the substance," he said.
The chief editor of Tempo magazine, Bambang Harimurti, said the media is key to monitoring excessive powers that could potentially mar democracy in Indonesia.
"Keeping information from the public gives the idea that the public is the enemy," he said, adding that the media plays a significant role in raising public awareness of the dangers of such excessive powers.