Markus Junianto Sihaloho & Anita Rachman – At 8:20 p.m. on the last day that the long-awaited social security bill could be passed into law, the House of Representatives announced it had made history.
"For the first time, we have a social security scheme," announced Deputy House Speaker Pramono Anung, who led the plenary late on Friday night.
Under the new law, a social security organizing body (BPJS) will be formed on Jan. 1, 2014, to provide health insurance to all Indonesians. Those with a regular income will have to pay monthly premiums, while the government will pay premiums for people who are poor or unemployed.
By July 2015 at the latest, a second BPJS will be running to provide work accident and life insurance as well as pension schemes.
These two bodies will take over and expand the work currently done by four state-owned insurers – Jamsostek, Taspen, Asabri and Askes – which manage Rp 190 trillion ($22.2 billion) in insurance funds between them.
The transformation will also change the status of the state entities' profits. Currently, the profits of the four state-owned enterprises go to the government. After the transformation, the profits will directly go to the new shareholders – the people.
On Friday, thousands of angry protesters, mostly from various workers unions, rallied in front of the House to demand that lawmakers pass the bill.
Missing the Friday deadline would have meant that the bill, already discussed through the maximum four sitting periods allowed under the House code, would have to be shelved until 2014 when a new slate of legislators will take their place.
And for most of the day, it seemed things would go that way, until it emerged that lobbying at the residence of Vice President Boediono on Friday afternoon had led to a consensus.
All the political party factions in the House actually agreed on the main issue – that the nation needed the BPJS law – but the sticking point was when.
Most wanted the transformations of the existing state-owned insurers to the BPJS bodies by January 2014, while the ruling party wanted the second body to be given more time, until 2016.
Said Iqbal, secretary general of the Social Security Action Committee, questioned the different targets. "We should be wary. Maybe workers' money in Jamsostek will be used for the 2014 presidential election," he said.
The July 2015 date for the second BPJS was the compromise agreed upon, BPJS Special Committee chairman Ahmad Nizar Shihab, a Democrat, told the plenary on Friday evening.
Ahmad said the new law might be the legislators' ticket to heaven, a statement echoed by other House leaders.
"This is the result of our compromises, a political decision," said Marwan Jafar, the faction chairman of the National Awakening Party (PKB). He added that intervention from Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) chairwoman Megawati Sukarnoputri instructing her party to agree to July 2015 broke the deadlock.
The passage resulted in an eruption of cheering from the workers inside the plenary hall. They feted Rieke Dyah Pitaloka, a PDI-P lawmaker and a staunch advocate of the bill who is in a wheelchair due to her advanced pregnancy. They yelled happily around the House of Representatives complex.
House Speaker Marzuki Alie said in his closing speech that it was with the spirit of togetherness and putting people's interests above everything else that the House and government managed to agree to pass the bill.