Hans David Tampobolon – The House of Representatives will establish a new team to monitor the implementation of the legislative body's recommendations on the Bank Century bailout.
"The team's job is to ensure the mandates given by the House to related institutions are fully implemented. If we do not monitor the implementation, we fear the follow-up actions may be slow," Golkar's Bambang Soesatyo, one of the sponsors of the House inquiry into the bailout, said Thursday.
Bambang said that he and other former House inquiry committee members would urge the House's consultative body to immediately set up the team, which he said would consist of 15 lawmakers.
"Once the team is established, its first main job is to set up a taskforce consisting of the police, the Financial Transactions Report and Analysis Center [PPATK], the Corruption Eradication Commission [KPK], and the Attorney General's Office [AGO] to finish the inquiry committee's unfinished work, which is to trace the disbursement of the bailout funds," he said.
Some irregularities have been found in the disbursement of the bailout, which increased ten fold to Rp 6.76 trillion (US$716 million) from its original estimate.
Prior to the inquiry it was alleged that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party might have received a portion of the bailout fund, but the inquiry committee found no evidence to support these claims.
The House voted Wednesday on final recommendations that concluded the bailout, which was authorized in November 2008 by Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati and then Bank Indonesia governor Boediono, now Vice President, was flawed and plagued by corruption.
The House also recommended legal measures be taken against all individuals responsible for the bailout policy.
Due to the monitoring team's crucial role in overseeing the law enforcers' investigation into a number of high-profile individuals, including Mulyani and Boediono, former inquiry committee members predict the team will consist mostly of ex-committee members.
"There is a great chance former inquiry committee members will be appointed by their respective parties to sit in the monitoring team," former committee member Andi Rahmat from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) told The Jakarta Post.
Former deputy chairman of the committee Gayus Lumbuun, from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said that he also believed some former committee members would join the monitoring team for the sake of continuity.
"Plus additional members from related House commissions, such as Commission III [on Law and Human Rights] and Commission XI [on Banking and Finance]," he said.