Markus Junianto Sihaloho & Febriamy Hutapea – Despite calls from some former lawmakers to stop the debate over the controversial deletion of a section identifying tobacco as an addictive substance from the newly endorsed health bill, some activists on Friday vowed to file complaints with law enforcement agencies
Tulus Abadi, from the Indonesian Consumer Protection Foundation (YKLI), said he and other activists, including members of Indonesia Corruption Watch, would take their complaints to the House of Representatives on Monday.
"It will be our first step, reporting the case to the House's Ethics Council," Tulus said. "We want the House's Ethics Council to investigate who was responsible for this controversy."
The next step, he said, will be to file a complaint with the police, alleging that certain persons from the Ministry of Health and the House's Secretariat may have deliberately contrived to delete the reference from the bill.
"The disappearance of the article from the law was intentional and a high-level conspiracy. There are clear indications that it was a crime," Tulus alleged.
The third and final step, he said, will be to file a complaint with the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). "We want the KPK to look into whether corruption played any role in this controversy," he said.
Meanwhile, Andi Matalatta, the justice and human rights minister, said on Friday that he had approved the health bill and it would be soon be delivered to the Presidential Palace for final approval.
He said the missing article on tobacco had been restored. "The House must be held responsible for how it [the section] ended up missing," Andi said.
Andi and newly-elected House Speaker Marzuki Alie, however, both said that the deletion of the missing article was likely just an administrative error.
"We are gathering as much information related to the case as possible to see whether this was intentional or not," Marzuki said. "The House executive board met last night to discuss the problem."
M Moeftie, chairman of the Association of White (non-clove) Cigarette Producers, said the group had never objected to the contents of the bill, including the article identifying tobacco as an addictive substance.
"The most important thing for us right now is that all relevant stakeholders must increasingly focus on our common goal, establishing comprehensive control over tobacco in Indonesia," Moeftie said.