Markus Junianto Sihaloho – House of Representatives members responsible for drafting the military tribunal bill were criticized on Wednesday for poor attendance, which had all but sunk any chance of military reform before the House term ends in September.

This was after another drafting session that had been scheduled for Wednesday had to be postponed because more than half of the lawmakers assigned to take part in the deliberations failed to appear.

Although they have only five weeks left to complete the deliberations before their current 2004-09 term ends, only 21 of the 50 members of the special committee tasked with drafting the bill made an appearance.

Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono and ministry officials, as the governments' representatives for the deliberations, were left waiting for more than an hour before the chairman of the committee, Andreas Pareira, decided to postpone the meeting.

The coordinator of the Concerned Citizens Forum for the Indonesian Parliament, Sebastian Salang, criticized the attitude of the lawmakers.

"They don't seem to care about their tasks because most of them are already at the end of their [House] work term," he said. "Right now, a lot of lawmakers prefer to travel abroad rather than discussing bills."

Andreas told journalists that the meeting had been scheduled to hammer out differences between the committee and the Ministry of Defense.

"The meeting's agenda was to allow each faction of lawmakers to deliver their stance on President Yudhoyono's suggestion on how the committee and the ministry could settle their differences," Andreas said.

Talks on the bill have been deadlocked for almost 11 months because of the military's insistence on maintaining the existing policy that soldiers suspected of civilian criminal offenses only be investigated by military investigators.

Civilian legal officers are involved only after an investigation brief is handed over to prosecutors and civilian courts.

Four factions in the House – the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the National Mandate Party (PAN), the United Development Party (PPP) and the National Awakening Party (PKB) – have continued to oppose the military on this, insisting that investigations of any civilian criminal offenses by soldiers be conducted by civilian police.

Yudhoyono had suggested a transition period and that a new civilian body be established to supervise investigations by the military of suspected civilian criminal offenses by soldiers.

Andreas could not hide his disappointment over the bill drafting process, which is now unlikely to be completed before the current lawmakers end their terms in September.