Febriamy Hutapea – The People's Consultative Assembly on Monday enacted detailed procedures to impeach a vice president but claimed that the move had nothing to do with Vice President Boediono, whose political future is in doubt after a number of political parties say he broke the law in approving the costly Bank Century bailout.

Lawmaker Martin Hutabarat, a member of the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), said the assembly, also known as the MPR, was just tending to its constitutional duties and not testing ways to resolve the Bank Century scandal.

"The impeachment procedure was not created to be implemented soon," he said. "It's just an ordinary regulation."

Former lawmaker Andreas Pareira said the MPR's creation of a detailed method to impeach a vice president was in preparation for any possibility arising from the bailout probe. "Preparing such regulation is actually normal work for the MPR. The regulation would be useful not only this time, but also for the future," Andreas said.

MPR Deputy Chairman Lukman Hakim Syaifuddin said an ad hoc committee of the consultative body had discovered a problem with the vice presidential impeachment procedures.

"There is no ruling stipulating the importance of a verification team for selecting the two vice presidential candidates proposed by the president," Lukman told the plenary session.

Under the regulation, if the vice presidential seat becomes vacant, the president has the authority to propose two names to the assembly at least 14 days before a plenary session is conducted. The assembly will form a verification team selecting whether the two candidates are eligible.

MPR members will each vote for one candidate, and the one getting the highest number of votes is thereby elected as the vice president.

The regulation also determines the process to be used if both the president and vice president are incapacitated at the same time.

Under the regulation, the party or coalition parties that have a right to propose candidates for both posts are those that have earlier proposed candidates and were listed in the General Elections Commission (KPU) during the election.

The party or coalition parties with the second-highest number of votes during the election can also propose their own candidate.

Afterward, the MPR leadership will pair the candidates and elect them based on the popular-votes system during a plenary session.