The Outgoing DPR

The members of the national parliament (DPR) are racing against time as their five years office term is about to end on October. Maybe that's why they are so eager to end it that they wanted to pass as much law bills as possible.

But the strange thing is that only less than one third of the 550 members of DPR attended the plenary sessions, while the others were absent for unknown reason.

Last week, less than 100 members attended the plenary session that passed the Environment Management & Protection and the Film bills.
Last Monday, only 180 members attended the session that passed four bills into laws i.e Anti-Narcotics, Health, Haj and Immigration bills.
And on Wednesday similar number of members attended the plenary session that passed the Value Added Tax & Sales Tax bill into law.
But unfortunately, the DPR has not been so eager to finalize discussion with the government about the amendment of the Corruption Crime bill that they have to pospone the discussion to a later date. So is the discussion about the Secrecy bill.

Many critics said that those bills were not prepared properly therefore the quality of the laws are questionable. Due to which fact, when they become laws, most most likely the would be subject to Judicial Review.
They criticized the Anti-Narcotics bill which classify Drug Users as crimminals that should be punnished, while according to doctors drug addiction is a curable disease.
They critisized the Health bill which only stipulate the maximum but no minimum punnishment for Hospitals and their doctors who were proved to have caused injury to a patient.
The Haj bill is merely to comply with the regulation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that Haj pilgrims should have special passport.
The Immigration bill includes measures to curb illegal immigration, terrorism, money laundering and people trafficking, and makes “fake marriages” to obtain Indonesian citizenship a crime.
While the Tax bill changed the Value Added Tax from a fixed 10% to 5 into 15%.

For details on the above, please click here, here, here and here.

Considering the above facts, I hope that they are not as bad as described by the critics, in this case I will have to keep my fingers crossed!


Photo : Courtesy of DPR