SP/Carlos Paath – The House of Representatives is still waiting to see if the government's human rights watchdog can resolve an internal dispute before it is forced to take over the body, an official said on Friday.
Al Muzzammil Yusuf, a deputy chairman of House Commission III, which oversees legal affairs, said the House had not yet received any report from the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) regarding its efforts on ending a leadership spat that began earlier this year.
"We still haven't been able to evaluate their progress because we don't have any reports from them on how they're progressing," he said.
"We'll have to hold discussions with Komnas HAM. If they're prepared to resolve the dispute themselves, that would be ideal, But if not, then we're ready to facilitate some kind of dialogue. We hope, though, that they can finish this quickly because it's really a small problem."
The dispute at Komnas HAM revolves around the length of the term served by the chairman, which some commissioners have proposed should be cut from the current two and a half years to just one year.
Four of the organization's 13 commissioners, including Otto Nur Abdullah, the chairman, have opposed the move, but the nine other commissioners have supported the proposal. The split became apparent in early January when the commissioners met to vote on the proposal. The heated argument that followed the vote devolved into recriminations about the unfairness of the chairman getting a Toyota Camry for the length of his tenure while the other commissioners received less luxurious cars.
Otto and his two deputies, Sandrayati Moniaga and Muhammad Nurkhoiron, resigned from their posts in February, leaving Komnas HAM leaderless since then.
The House had given Komnas HAM until the middle of this month to resolve the dispute or be taken over by House Commission III ahead of the selection of a new batch of commissioners.
Al Muzzammil, from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), said he hoped the rights body would be able to resolve the matter on its own and get back to its work of addressing rights issues.
"There are a lot of rights issues in Indonesia at the moment, so we hope the Komnas HAM commissioners can put their differences aside and work together again," he said.
M.M. Billah, an independent rights activist, said separately that the Komnas HAM commissioners were guilty of ethical violations for bickering over their job perks rather than focusing on their actual duties and responsibilities.
"They were selected to Komnas HAM to fight for people's rights," he said at a discussion on Friday. "They're not there to fight over facilities and power. How are they supposed to defend human rights if they can't get past this internal squabbling?"
Todung Mulya Lubis, a renowned human rights lawyer, said he feared that the unrest at Komnas HAM had been sowed for political interests, to undermine the commission's ability to bring past rights abuses to light.
"These shady powers, by influencing the selection of the Komnas HAM commissioners, have managed to get their people into this position of power. As a result, the Komnas HAM that we see today is just as powerless as that of the New Order regime," he said.
Haris Azhar, the coordinator of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), said earlier this week that he believed the issue of shortening the chairperson's term had been raised with the intention of creating a rift in Komnas HAM.
"This proposal had nothing to do with the main issue that Komnas HAM was facing, namely bureaucratic reform," he said on Wednesday. "It was a completely unreasonable proposal that led to the bickering over facilities, titles, and so on, thereby undermining Komnas HAM systematically ahead of the 2014 elections."