Tony Hotland, Jakarta – The transparency of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) remains a source of hot debate in the deliberation of the freedom to access public information bill at the House of Representatives.
With the government insisting SOEs be made exempt from the bill and the House arguing for the opposite, observers say the debate has reconfirmed the strategic and financial importance of state firms to certain political interests.
State Minister for State Enterprises Sofyan A. Djalil said last week the government's wish to keep these state enterprises out of the bill's scope was non-negotiable, and insisted that information regarding business strategies should be protected to ensure sound competition.
Sofyan was formerly the communication and information minister, the post under which he was representing the government in the deliberation of the bill. Last Monday he was handed the state enterprises portfolio by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in the Cabinet reshuffle.
Despite the stance of hard-liners in its ranks, the House has offered concessions to enterprises on the information they can keep confidential, said Tosari Widjaja of the United Development Party (PPP) faction and chairman of the House's working committee responsible for the bill's deliberation.
"We've offered compromises to allow business strategies to not be accessible to the public. But say these firms get subsidies worth billions, don't we have the right to know what its being used for?" he asked Tuesday at a discussion on the bill.
Tosari reiterated that state enterprises are financed by the public's taxes and are justifiably subject to public access and scrutiny.
The government maintains, however, that a degree of transparency within these enterprises is upheld by the law on state enterprises and the holding of stakeholders meetings.
State enterprises are believed to have been cash cows for the powerful, who used them for personal or collective gains and left them incessantly cash-strapped despite numerous profitable periods.
Companies such as flag-carrier Garuda Indonesia and state oil and gas producer PT Pertamina have been continuously mired in financial mismanagement due to the opacity of their capital and cash flows.
Tosari said most legislators on the working committee shared the opinion that state enterprises should be subject to public access.
Critics have insinuated, however, that money politics die hard, a stance substantiated, perhaps, by the powerful backing given to the government at the House by Vice President Jusuf Kalla's Golkar Party and the President's Democratic Party. Golkar has the largest faction at the House.
The current draft of the bill lists nine criteria that information must satisfy to be withheld from the public's eye. Among them is information that, if revealed, endangers efforts to prevent and handle crimes; endangers national security; disturbs relations with other countries or violates individuals' privacy in a way not related to public matters.
Exempted information will be regulated in an ensuing bill on state secrecy.
When the bill is passed into law, the public will have the right to seek information from the affected institutions – those financed by the state budget and those that are public service orientated – on their services and activities.
There will be a commission on information, comprising two government officials and five members of the public, to settle disputes on the accessibility of certain information.
Refusal to provide information by an institution is subject to a maximum five-year jail term, while misuse of the information is subject to two years.