Jakarta – A motley crew comprising women's rights activists, a legislative body with no actual powers, and a former president said to be trying to cling to power vicariously through her daughter, came together on Thursday to contest a hastily passed law they all agree brings out the worst elements of the House of Representatives.
The Constitutional Court began hearing on Thursday the objections to the Law on Legislative Bodies, known as the MD3 law, which has garnered widespread criticism since its passage by the House on July 8 – when the entire nation was fully engrossed in the lead-up to the next day's landmark presidential election.
The first to formally seek a judicial review of the law, an amended version of the legislation first issued in 2009 law, was former president Megawati Soekarnoputri, whose party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), won the most votes in the April 9 legislative election.
Megawati's objection to the law is its scrapping of a previous provision that automatically gave the House speaker's post to the party with the most seats. Under the new law, the speaker's post will now be put to a vote, which, given the PDI-P's lack of a majority when the new House convenes next month, is unlikely to go to the PDI-P.
Megawati, who was widely expected to name her daughter, Puan Maharani, to the speaker's post, contends that the entire process of deliberating the amendments was flawed, and that the new mechanism for choosing the speaker was not introduced until the deliberations were at a very advanced stage, despite the importance of the issue.
No female quota
Also listed as co-plaintiffs in the challenge to the MD3 law are women's rights activists and organizations, in a coalition led by PDI-P legislator Rieke Dyah Pitaloka and former women's empowerment minister Khofifah Indar Parawansa.
They argue that the new law is unconstitutional because it does away with any mention of minimum quotas for female legislators in key posts such as commission chairs and on the ethics council and budget committee.
The 2009 law simply stated that female representation in such posts should be a reflection of their representation in their respective parties. A supporting regulation later set an arbitrary quota of 30 percent, but this was dismissed by the Constitutional Court in 2013.
Warrants
The third of the five groups challenging the MD3 law is the Regional Representatives Council (DPD), a legislative body comprising four representatives from each province whose task is to work on issues pertinent to regional development – but who in reality have no power to conceive or pass legislation, although they may occasionally be called in by the House to hear ongoing deliberations.
The DPD contends that the new law contravenes the constitutional statute giving it the power to propose and deliberate legislation – but not to pass it – although in this regarded the 2014 law is largely unchanged form the 2009 version.
Two other groups challenging the law are the Institute for Criminal Justice Reform and historian J.J. Rizal, who have taken issue with a new provision requiring that law enforcement officers obtain a warrant from the ethics council before they can question a legislator in a criminal investigation.
Dozens of legislators have been grilled and subsequently tried and convicted in graft cases in recent years by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). And the new clause has been criticized as yet another attempt by the House, widely perceived as corrupt, to ward off the graft busters.
The House previously tried to do something similar by requiring that the KPK request a court warrant in order to conduct a wiretap on any individual, but that motion was struck down by the Constitutional Court.