Jakarta – Lawmakers have denied that they are secretly revising the bill governing the nation's intelligence agencies that is currently under deliberation at the House of Representatives.
"It's not true. Everything is open to the public," Evita Nursanty, a lawmaker from House's Commission I overseeing intelligence, told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
Evita, a member of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said that members of the commission were currently gathering input from many sources and that the commission disagreed with several points of the bill that concerned the public.
"I read the newspapers and realized that the public was concerned with several articles of the bill that were related to arrests and wiretapping. We have the same concerns."
Evita said that the complexity of the bill, which at several points was related to other rules, such as those governing wiretapping, meant that legislators were still far from endorsing the bill.
Fellow PDI-P lawmaker and commission member Heri Ahmadi, agreed. "We still need to do some tests on the bill," he said.
Another Commission I member, Abdul Malik Haramain, said deliberations on the bill would likely stagnate on provisions granting intelligence agencies arrest authority.
The human rights watchdog Imparsial recently urged the House to be transparent in deliberating the controversial bill, saying it contained provisions that might jeopardize democracy and human rights.
Imparsial representative Al Araf said in a statement that lawmakers must publicly disclose all the changes they proposed making to the bill before passing it into law, given that the House was reportedly set to endorse the bill on Sept. 27.
Imparsial claimed there were at least 30 "problematic" articles in the bill. "Legislators must reveal whether the articles were changed or upheld," Al Araf said.
Another activist from Imparsial, Gufron Mabruri, told the Post that some of the problematic articles might grant intelligence agencies intensive investigative powers that could give agencies the authority to make arrests or conduct wiretaps without court approval.
The NGO said that the bill might allow the Indonesian Military's intelligence agencies and the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) to make arrests and conduct wiretaps, warning that it might augur the return of a repressive political regime.
More than 70 noted experts and activists, including high-profile attorneys and human rights activists Adnan Buyung Nasution and Todung Mulya Lubis, previously issued stating the bill would return authoritarian rule to country.
The declaration stated that lawmakers must cancel deliberations of the bill, or possibly drop it. It said that the bill was premature and would lead to abuses of power similar to those that occurred under former president Soeharto. (rpt)