The atmosphere of the opening of a plenary session of the House of Representatives at Nusantara II Building at the Parliament Complex, Jakarta, Thursday (18/5). The session opened the fifth House meeting stage of the 2016 - 2017 period.
Efforts to slice up the cake of power are taking place in the discussion for the revision of the laws on the People\'s Consultative Assembly (MPR), the House of Representatives (DPR), the Regional Representatives Council (DPD) and Provincial/Regency Legislative Councils (DPRD) or UU MD3.
Under the pretext of compromise, the House Special Committee plans to increase the number of speakers at the MPR from five to eleven people, speakers of DPR from five to seven, speakers of DPD from three to five.
The plan, which has reached compromise by swelling the number of MPR speakers to 11 people, clearly does not have a solid basis of justification. The role and function of MPR speakers are not very clear. The addition of the chairs of the MPR leadership is too much and burdening the state budget.
Quoting the explanation of Vice Chairman of the House Legislative Body Firman Subagyo, the proposed addition of chairs of MPR leadership is the result of high-level lobbying of the leadership of political parties. "In politics there are interests and there has to be compromise. If not, it is not over," said Firman in Kompas report on May 23, 2017.
The public has reacted with scorn to the plan to find a compromise by divvying up the power cake, without defining the clear function for the community. The discussion of the revision of UU MD3 has become an arena for power sharing following a historical "accident" in the House plenary session in 2014.
The competition between the Red and White Coalition and the Great Indonesian Coalition made the general election-winning party, the PDIP, have no representation in the leadership in DPR and MPR. This condition is a bit ironic because there is a deputy speaker who does not have any party because the central executive board of his party dismissed him. Before the election of the DPR speaker was carried out, the 2009-2014 DPR changed the method of the DPR leadership elections from a proportional system to a package system.
The revision of UU MD3 which is based on the spirit of giving seats to the party winning the election must be paid with a request to increase the number of MPR chairs to 11 people. We regret that the discussion of UU MD3 revision is more focused on the distribution of the chairs.
The DPR should have worked on how the UU MD3 revision can be used to improve the performance of the DPR in the areas of supervision, budgeting and legislation. How UU MD3 obliges the DPR members to carry out consultation with constituents before making any political decisions. How UU MD3 regulates the standard of appropriateness of a legislator who is involved in a legal case. The DPR’s move to increase the number of leadership chairs at the MPR, DPR and DPD, is clearly against public rationality and will only be met with scorn.
