Ezra Sihite – House of Representatives lawmakers are pressing ahead with plans to summon President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to explain a cabinet minister's decision to tighten up sentence remissions for corruption convicts.
The remissions policy shift from Justice Minister Amir Syamsuddin came just as dozens of House members' former colleagues were due for early release after serving only a fraction of their sentences for accepting bribes in the Bank Indonesia governor selection scandal.
House members had claimed, in a Wednesday meeting with Amir and his deputy, that the remissions clamp down for graft convicts constituted a human rights violation.
An Indonesia Corruption Watch activist, however, ridiculed some House members' appeals to principles of human rights on the remissions policy as self-serving and hypocritical.
"When they should be talking about human rights, the House is often silent, but when the issue of remissions [for former House members] comes up, they immediately claim there's a breach of human rights," ICW deputy chairman Adnan Topan Husodo said on Friday.
He added that the new policy to tighten up on the usually generous remissions granted by prison wardens, especially to wealthier convicts, was done in response to a public demand for justice.
"This policy has to be carried out, because it is the public's demand," Adnan said at the Regional Representatives Council (DPD) building in Senayan.
House members were flexing their muscles on Friday, talking of exercising their right to cross-examine the president over a decision by the executive branch of government – in this case, the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights.
Ahmad Yani of the United Development Party (PPP) said he had gathered the signatures of 27 other lawmakers from seven parties on a motion to call the president in, to account for his minster's tightening of remissions. The signatures would be delivered to the House leadership in order that the motion be put to a vote, Yani said. He said that for a motion to be valid, it required more than 25 signatures from more than one party, "so it's already valid."
Another of the motion's sponsors, Bambang Soesatyo of the Golkar Party, said he hoped the House would act to bring Yudhoyono to account, because he felt the government had made a mistake in tightening up remissions, parole and the "assimilation period" treatment of graft convicts.
Bambang said he was looking forward to finding out whether Amir was acting with the president's approval. "We will exercise our right to call the president to speak at the House in order to determine whether he knew of this policy," Bambang said.
For his part, the minister remained convinced that the policy was appropriate, even after a contentious hearing with House Commission III, which oversees legal affairs, on Wednesday.
The majority of supporters of the motion are Golkar members, along with a handful of lawmakers from the PPP, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), the People's Conscience Party (Hanura), the National Mandate Party (PAN) and the Great Indonesian Movement Party (Gerindra).