Markus Junianto Sihaloho, Jakarta – The House of Representatives' Ethics Council must censure legislators who have protested against a plan to publish a list of truant individuals, a think tank said yesterday.

Eryanto Nugraha, executive director of the Center for Indonesian Law and Policy (PSHK), said that rather than get worked up over the name-and-shame proposal, legislators should see it as an opportunity for reflection and self-evaluation.

"The House Ethics Council must officially warn such legislators to be more careful in their responses to such plans," he said.

Such resistance, he added, could be seen as an attempt to undermine the freedom of information law, which guarantees the people's right to access information and obligates the bureaucracy to provide such information.

"That's why legislators don't have any valid reasons to protest the planned publication of the list," Eryanto said. "By shouting it down, they're showing their opposition to a law that they themselves passed."

PSHK advocacy director Ronald Rofiandri called on the House Secretariat, which manages attendance lists, not to be influenced by the anger directed toward the proposal, and instead to abide by the prevailing freedom of information law.

"I'm sure this wave of righteous anger and indignation could easily cow the Secretariat into not releasing the information that the public has a right to," he said.

Ethics Council deputy chairman Nudirman Munir said any information released by the Secretariat would have to be reviewed to ensure it was up to date.

"We're still collecting all the data on legislators' attendance rates," he said, adding there was no plan in the works to censure legislators opposed to the publication of the lists.

Several legislators have criticized the House Secretariat's move to name truant individuals, claiming its attendance information remains unconfirmed. They also say the publication of the lists could be possible grounds for a defamation lawsuit.

The Secretariat previously released information showing that none of the nine parties in the House had ever had all of its legislators show for a plenary session.

The information also showed that dozens of legislators had regularly skipped plenary sessions, with 12 of them missing out on three or more sessions.

Meanwhile, University of Indonesia legal expert Irmanputra Sidin called for an end to the debate over legislators' poor attendance rates, saying that a legislator's performance should not be gauged solely by one statistic.

"While the prevailing regulations stipulate that a legislator who skips six consecutive plenary meetings without a valid excuse must be dismissed, we should never measure their performance by their attendance records," he said.

He added it would be more appropriate to measure a legislator's worth by the bills they proposed, their contributions in deliberating the state budget and how they represent the interests of their constituents.

"If the attendance rate becomes the yardstick by which we measure a legislator's performance, then we'll effectively be forcing them to come into these meetings, wait them out, and go home, without doing anything constructive during that time," Irmanputra said.