Marianne Kearney, Jakarta – The seemingly endless battle between the Indonesian Parliament and President Abdurrahman Wahid over who should rule the country has left the government with little time to focus on the business of running Indonesia.

Unpassed laws have piled up and conflicts between government departments remain unsolved. Investment and development are also delayed as investors wait for the government to sort out who is in control, analysts said.

"Legislation that is pretty mature is sent out, and parliament just lets it sit there," said the head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia, Mr James Castle.

He said oil and gas Bills have still not been passed, two years after the first drafts were presented to parliament.

A recent edition of the local magazine Tempo said only 51 out of 82 draft Bills that have arrived in parliament have been passed over the last 18 months.

More than 100 drafts are still waiting to be assessed by parliamentary committees, said Mr Hermawan Sulistyo, who has worked on draft legislation for election laws. "It's not the time for passing laws. This is politicking in the strictest sense, in that it's the politics of fighting for a position or an economic resource," he said.

Mr Hermawan and other political observers said members of parliament often passed laws only when they were given incentives, such as offers of lucrative positions in a state company for their party members. Mr Castle cited an example where parliamentary committees had asked private companies investing in natural resource industries for "coffee and tea money" before they would even consider legislation that would affect these firms.

He added that the political struggle has resulted in a lack of direction, costing Indonesia billions of dollars in lost investment. 'The cost of poor governance is huge,' he said.

The absence of strong leadership also meant that major issues and policy decisions were being made by bureaucrats and not the ministers in charge, he said. "For instance, you have the head of Telkom making telecommunications policy," he said, referring to one of Indonesia's largest telephone companies. "It's like having Bill Gates making and interpreting computer industry regulations in the States."

And then there is the issue of regional autonomy. Disagreements between the government and parliament over how to deal with independence demands in Aceh and Irian Jaya have also led parliament to spend more than 18 months considering autonomy legislation, said political analyst Alfitra Salam.