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Members of Indonesia's House of Representatives have come under fire for passing a law giving themselves powers to obstruct corruption investigations and even press charges against their critics.
Key points:
- Critics of the law say that it is "authoritarianism in a sense"
- Opponents to the laws are preparing Constitutional Court challenges
- The laws aim to protect MPs from criticism and prosecution
- Anti-corruption officers have been investigating politicians
The revised Law of Representative Assemblies — locally referred to as the MD3 law — may also allow members to compel police to haul people into the House of Representatives (DPR) to face questioning from politicians.
Petitions against the changes have gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures since they were passed on February 12, and challenges to the law in Indonesia's Constitutional Court are already being prepared.
The MD3 law is set to come into force on March 13 unless President Joko Widodo — whose own party led the revisions — ratifies it sooner.
Observers say the law went largely unnoticed as it was passed at the same time as controversial LGBT laws.
Dini Purwono, a member of the Indonesian Solidarity Party's legal division, told the ABC it had filed a judicial review objecting to the "ambiguous" nature of the laws.
"It endangers justice and democracy. In fact, they are against our constitution," Ms Purwono said.
"I feel like we're going backward, it's authoritarianism in a sense."
Professor Tim Lindsey, the director of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society at the University of Melbourne, said the revisions constituted a "very dramatic accrual of powers".
"It's aiming to create a DPR that is able to resist criticism, and stifle criticism, and which protects its members from prosecution," he said.
The law change comes as DPR members continue to wage war with Indonesia's Corruption Eradication Commission, which has led numerous high-profile investigations into politicians.
"Many of the critics of the DPR in Indonesia talk about a slow unwinding of democracy in Indonesia," Professor Lindsey said.
"It's probably too soon to say whether that's the case, but these elements don't bode well."
Critics may be hauled before Parliament
A vaguely worded article within the revised law allows members of the House of Representatives (DPR) to press charges against anybody who "tarnishes the dignity" of the Parliament or its members.
"That has a potentially enormously wide scope," Professor Lindsey said.
"It seems that the DPR has given itself power that may be wide enough to allow it to bring criminal proceedings against its critics, including the media or civil society."
Professor Lindsey said another article making it mandatory for police to bring people before the Parliament for questioning could be used both against such critics, as well as corruption investigators.
"It's almost as if the Australian Parliament was out arresting people and dragging them before Senate Estimates," Professor Lindsey said.
"The DPR has a got a terrible track record of corruption and misconduct on a grand scale … so if you try and criticise it, does that mean that you will find yourself facing legal steps from the House Ethics Council?"
A third article facing scrutiny forces police and corruption investigators to "consider the views" of the DPR's Ethics Council before investigating a member of parliament.
Indonesia's Constitutional Court struck out a similar article in the same law back in 2014 — the original wording allowed the parliament to fully prevent investigations.
"It's softer than the previous provision, but it's clearly trying to make it as difficult and as obstructive as possible for anyone to question DPR members for crimes, particularly for example corruption," Professor Lindsey said.
Jokowi's hands are tied
Mr Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, is yet to sign the revisions into law — a sign of how much public opposition the legislation has sparked.
"I understand the unrest in society about this. We all want the quality of our democracy to increase, not to decrease," Mr Widodo wrote on Twitter last week.
Mr Widodo's own Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) was one of the leading forces behind the revisions, which were supported by eight political parties.
But Professor Ian Wilson, an Indonesian politics researcher at Murdoch University, said there is not much the leader can do as the laws will automatically come into force after 30 days, even if he does not ratify them.
"There's been a huge backlash. There's online petitions. There's been a variety of civil organisations, advocacy groups that are lobbying now largely to the President for the laws to not be ratified," Professor Wilson said.
"He has in principle the capacity to not ratify the laws, but that doesn't mean that they wont necessarily pass anyway."
The politics around the issue is complicated by a series of regional elections to be held this year, as well as the upcoming presidential elections in April 2019.
"The President probably will be seen as trying to establish a middle ground, not alienating his party support base within Parliament, but at the same time there's a populist position he could take," Professor Wilson said.
"Many people see this as Parliament seeking to protect itself. It's a deeply mistrusted and generally disliked institution in Indonesia — poll after poll shows that people have very little faith or trust in Indonesian parliament."
Topics: world-politics, law-crime-and-justice, corruption, police, indonesia
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