Margareth S. Aritonang, Jakarta – The House of Representatives (DPR) Ethics Council has banned lawmaker Ribka Tjiptaning Proletariyati from presiding over any of the House's special committee meetings until 2014 for her unexpected failure.
The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) lawmaker, who chaired House committee deliberations of the health bill, was deemed responsible for omitting a clause from Article 113 of the bill, which listed tobacco as an addictive substance.
"We conclude that Ribka is guilty and we have informed the PDI-P about our decision. We have sent [Ribka] a warning, reminding her to not repeat similar carelessness in the future. Furthermore, we have also banned her from presiding over any of the House's committee meetings in the future," Ethics Council chairman M. Prakosa told The Jakarta Post in a message on Tuesday.
House Ethics Council deputy chairman Siswono Yudo Husodo said the missing clause was an administrative error. It was not intentionally omitted from the law as Ribka presented it before a plenary session for House approval, he added.
"Ribka is not entirely responsible for the missing clause because she did read the clause aloud when she was presenting the bill before the House during a plenary meeting in 2009. However, the clause was not included in the final draft. We believe there had been unintentional administrative errors, such as typos, during the final process.
"No matter what, she was responsible for the missing clause as she chaired the committee. Banning her from leading any other committees at the House until the end of her term is a way to punish her," he said. He added the "punishment" had been applied since January this year.
University of Indonesia's (UI) demography researcher Abdillah Hasan applauded the House Ethics Council decision to punish Ribka. The missing clause signaled something was wrong with her leadership capacity in deliberating the bill, he said.
Abdillah doubted that the omission of the clause was purely an administrative error, and thus believed that the clause was intentionally omitted from the final draft of the 2009 Health Law.
"I don't believe administrative staff members could be so careless as to make a huge mistake omitting a highly important clause from the law unless they were instructed to do so. I believe the staff members at the House's administrative division are very careful when it comes to the final draft of any laws. For this reason, I believe that the clause was intentionally omitted due to its impacts on interested parties, such as cigarettes producers," he said.
Without the clause stating that tobacco is an addictive substance, Abdillah said, the law was weak in controlling the distribution of tobacco nationwide. Had the clause remained, it would have given a strong legal foundation to curb the production and nationwide distribution of tobacco, the main material in cigarettes.
"Article 46 of the Law on Broadcasting, for example, bans advertisements of all addictive substances. Therefore, the government could have banned cigarettes being advertised nationwide if the 2009 Health Law included tobacco among addictive substances," Abdillah said.
The omission of the clause from the Health Law was first reported by the Coalition for Anti-Tobacco Clause Corruption (KAKAR) last year as it found that the clause went missing several days before the law was endorsed by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.