Jakarta – Giving the House of Representatives more power and money to deliberate laws could curb the flow of illegal funds from ministries to lawmakers, analysts say.
Illegal funds paid by the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry to several House members to smooth the deliberation of a fisheries bill in 2004, they say, is only one small example of a common and deep-rooted practice of political bribery in the country.
Former minister Rokhmin Dahuri is now on trial for the illegal use of Rp 11.5 billion (US$1.27 million) in ministry funds, with some of that money going to lawmakers.
University of Indonesia analyst Arbi Sanit told The Jakarta Post on Sunday the current political system endorsed this practice.
"The fact that the President doesn't have control over the seats in the parliament and the inclusion of the government in the deliberation of bills make such funds inevitable," he said.
He said the deliberation of laws should be completely left to the House, as regulated in the 1945 Constitution.
Article 20(1) of the Constitution says the House holds the power to enact laws. But despite this, ensuing clauses in the article say all bills are to be deliberated by the House and the government, for joint approval, and that both have the power to propose laws.
Arbi said the limited number of House seats held by the President's Democratic Party added to the practice of bribery. The Democratic Party only has 57 of the 550 seats in the House.
Arbi said it would be difficult to stop the practice of illegal funds flowing from ministries to lawmakers, because it had become a part of politics here. "The ministries go all out to serve the lawmakers, including holding the deliberations at hotels, to make sure their bills get through," he said.
Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) member Fahmi Badoh said the practice was most common during the deliberation of laws, determining annual budgets and monitoring state-funded projects. "All illegal accounts for such funds must be scrutinized," he was quoted as saying by detik.com news portal.
Contacted separately, deputy chairman of the House's legislation body, Bomer Pasaribu, said given its status as the country's law-making center, the House should be allocated more money to draft laws.
The large gap between the budget given the House and the Justice and Human Rights Ministry to draft laws, said the Golkar Party lawmaker, left the House dependent on the government to finance the process.
The legislation body, for instance, is allocated less than Rp 200 million (US$22,222) to draft a law. The Justice and Human Rights Ministry gets around 1.5 billion for each law.
More money, Bomer said, could be spent on legal experts to help ease the workload of legislation body members, who also serve on different House commissions.
Lawmakers asking for bribes is by no means novel. A number of lawmakers were tried by the House's ethics council in 2005 for "selling" budget allocations to officials of local administrations.
These officials paid lawmakers to speed up disbursements or increase allocations for their regions, including for disaster relief funds.