Bambang Muryanto, Yogyakarta – The bill on intelligence currently deliberated within the House of Representatives is flawed because it focuses more on the State Intelligence Body (BIN) and not on the functions of intelligence, a former spy chief said.

Speaking in Yogyakarta over the weekend, former BIN head A.M. Hendropriyono said that such a condition would lead to a repetition of past intelligence mistakes, such as dishonesty and case engineering.

"The bill must be reconsidered," he told The Jakarta Post after attending a discussion at the Muhammadiyah office in Yogyakarta.

Mufti Makarim of the Institute for Defense Security and Peace Studies (IDSPS) said that the bill was filled with articles that endanger civil rights. Among other articles was one stating that the intelligence agency is a government body and not a state body.

"We are concerned that the body will pay more attention on the government's interests and not on the state's interests," Mufti told a discussion on the bill recently held at the Gadjah Mada University campus compound. If that is the case, he said, there are potential violations against the civil rights that have been protected by a civil rights covenant.

Other endangering articles, according to Mufti, are those regarding the intelligence body's authority to conduct in wiretapping and arresting individuals without permission from the appropriate justice institutions, lack of functional control and the absence of a complaint mechanism, both for victimized people and for intelligence officials receiving orders to kill.

Mufti said he was not against the law on intelligence. "What we are against is that the intelligence bill that does not promote professionalism, is not accountable and does not guarantee the people's security," he said.

Scholar Arie Sujito of Gadjah Mada University's School of Social and Political Sciences said that the undemocratic bill on intelligence was a civil failure in defense and security reforms. "Since the reform era, all presidents have failed to reform defense and security in terms of democratization," Arie said.

He blamed the condition on the chaotic political problems that the ruling government is facing. "The bill comes when the regime is in chaos and this has been made as a basis for the formulation of the bill, article by article. It is therefore not placed in the frame of the people and state relationship," he said.

Providing an analogy, Arie said that the bill was prepared similar to someone preparing a way of dealing with a fire. As such, it lacks the mapping of problems and may contradict other laws. "We have a democratic law on public information, but at the same time we also have an undemocratic bill on intelligence," he said.

Arie reminded that intelligence must serve the state and not the government. "The bill must strengthen civil society and is not counterproductive or against democracy," he said.