Anita Rachman & Markus Junianto Sihaloho – In a dramatic late-night voting session on Tuesday, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party and five other parties successfully blocked a proposal to launch a House of Representatives special inquiry into corruption in the tax office.
But the victory was scored with the very narrow margin of two votes.
The Democratic Party and its allies, the National Mandate Party (PAN), the United Development Party (PPP) and the National Awakening Party (PKB), joined by the Great Indonesian Movement Party (Gerindra), garnered 266 votes.
The proponents of the proposal, the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and the People's Conscience Party (Hanura) joined by two key members of the pro-government coalition – the Golkar Party and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) – only got 264 votes.
Importantly, during Tuesday's plenary session 30 lawmakers were absent.
"With this voting result, the proposal to launch the inquiry into tax mafia cases is dropped," announced Marzuki Ali, House Speaker from the Democratic Party, who chaired the meeting.
PDI-P lawmaker Gayus Lumbuun said the result proved the prevalence of political pragmatism rather than idealism.
"The government must be ashamed of this, ashamed to the public. The president had once ordered that the government be cleaned up from the tax mafia, but now they themselves are the ones rejecting the initiative to do that," Gayus said.
Golkar and the PKS said they would accept the vote result but vowed to push the House to resolve the tax mafia cases through two working committees. "We are responsible to the people, thus we will keep on supporting the probe on the tax mafia," PKS secretary general Anis Matta said.
Syarif Hassan, secretary of the government's joint coalition of parties, said the voting dissatisfied him because there were members of the coalition who were disloyal. The statement was a clear reference to Golkar and PKS members' support for the inquiry.
Ahmad Muzani, Gerindra's House faction deputy chairman, said the party decided to oppose the inquiry for fear that it would be politically manipulated for Golkar's interests.
The plenary session was marked by repeated interruptions while the political factions argued their case, and a brief suspension to allow for lobbying between lawmakers. It was also marred by protests from Golkar, PDI-P, Hanura, and PKS lawmakers who objected to Marzuki's proposition that there were two voting options available.
One was whether to approve or reject the inquiry proposal, and the other whether to agree or disagree over the idea that the tax mafia problem should be settled through a common House working committee.
"As stated by the Legislative Law, Article 177, approval or rejection of an inquiry proposal must be decided in a House plenary meeting," said Ade Komaruddin, Golkar's House faction secretary. "We don't want to be forced to violate the law and our internal regulations here."
The House then decided to drop the second option and vote on the inquiry proposal.
Proponents of the inquiry have said the move was purely an attempt to end the institutional corruption plaguing the tax office while opponents said the same aims could be met by one or two House commissions or one joint commission. An inquiry, they said, could corner the government.
The House inquiry was first proposed in January, but was unable to win enough votes after seven Democratic lawmakers withdrew their support, saying the probe could be used as a political tool to impeach Yudhoyono. A second proposal was filed not long afterwards.