Febriamy Hutapea – In the end, the House of Representatives failed in its legislation-producing aims, even by its own, much-vaunted yardstick.
Although the House had set for itself an ambitious target by claiming that it would pass 70 percent of its 284 targeted bills, it ended the final day of its term having only passed 193, or just 68 percent.
Based on data from the Forum of Citizens Concerned about the Indonesian Legislature (Formappi), not all bills that were passed came from guidelines that prioritized bills in line with the people's needs, known as Prolegnas.
"Only 68 laws came from Prolegnas, or 35 percent," Formappi coordinator Sebastian Salang said.
The remainder were stealth bills, meaning they were proposed were different from what was agreed upon under Prolegnas. Worse, only 14 percent directly dealt with people's welfare. Those include the Hajj Pilgrimage Law, Disaster Law, Library Law, Tourism Law, Social Welfare Law, Transmigration Law, Narcotics Law, Health Law, and Teacher and University Lecturer Law.
Most of the legislation that was produced surrounds regional expansion. Sebastian said such bills became favorites because the process was easy – almost all concepts and content for them were the same – and gave benefits to the lawmakers politically and economically.
"The Prolegnas was ignored," Sebastian said, adding that this system of setting priority legislation was ineffective.
To sum up the House's performance, Sebastian said the House only managed 30 to 40 bills per year, less than its Prolegnas target of 50 to 60 bills per year.
"So, if we only count the substantial laws, the House only passed 92 bills over the past five years, or about 18 bills per year. DPR is still poor in performing its legislation role," Sebastian said.
The performance was, at least, marginally better than the previous DPR performance from 1999 to 2004, which completed 175 laws out of 300 on the Prolegnas agenda.
But Sebastian stressed that this was no comfort. "The House's commitment to fight for people's interest is doubtful. Its performance was further marred by bribery cases and a sex scandal," he said.
The Indonesian Parliamentary Center, on the other hand, said that with only 35 bills passed into law each year, each House committee only managed three laws per year, while there are at least 50 to 60 lawmakers in each committee.
This performance was not in line with the increase in legislation allowance. In 2007, the budget allocated to each bill (for research, food, legislators' allowances, hotel rooms) increased from Rp 560 million in 2005 to Rp 1.5 billion per bill.
"With the tripling of the budget, the legislation output should have also improved," said IPC researcher Hanafi.
He blamed the House's poor performance on the lack of formal deadlines. He said the House should set a regulation defining the ideal timeline of the legislation process, including the drafting process, discussion and endorsement.