House lawmakers, what are you making?

Another piece on respective House lawmakers I wrote yesterday. Yeah, they are unbelievable, what can I say? They haven’t passed any bills for almost EIGHT months! Will probably write something, my own P.O.V, on this.

ANITA RACHMAN

Pledge of 70 New Laws for Indonesia Slashed to 17

Having passed no legislation since being inaugurated in October, the House of Representatives has scaled back its ambitious goal of passing 70 laws this year, according to the panel that sets the legislative calendar for the House.

The national legislature may have to make do with just 17 priority bills for 2010, said Ignatius Mulyono, the chairman of the House Legislation Body.

“We are going to concentrate on those 17 bills this year, I guess,” he said. “It is pretty hard to tell lawmakers to do their job of legislating these days.”

Ignatius, a Democratic Party lawmaker, said on Thursday that through the end of May, the House had forwarded just six bills to plenary screening sessions, including a long-awaited protocol bill. By the middle of June, he promised, 17 draft bills would have been pushed through initial plenary screening — meaning that the draft would be completed — before being moved to commissions for deliberation.

Ignatius also confirmed that the House had so far passed no legislation this year, although he said he was hopeful that the remaining 53 bills on the to-do list would at least get a plenary screening by July.

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Local ‘WikiLeaks’ to escape big media censorship

ANITA RACHMAN

Seeking a media outlet free of the chains of corporate ownership, a group of journalists is planning to develop a Web site that will carry stories conventional news organizations dare not touch.

Wahyu Dhyatmika, chairman of the Jakarta chapter of the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), said he hoped the site could provide an alternative outlet for journalists to post sensitive documents or evidence deemed too “dangerous” to be published in their own media.

“In short, it would be similar to WikiLeaks,” he told the Jakarta Globe on Thursday, referring to the Sweden-based organization that publishes sensitive material and protects the anonymity of its sources. “We hope that in the future, all Indonesian journalists can engage and really benefit from this Web site and that will eventually strengthen our independent journalism.”

The Web site, which AJI Jakarta plans to launch in early August to coincide with its anniversary, is supported by the group’s chapters in Denpasar, Semarang, Surabaya, Malang and Pekanbaru.

Wahyu and 17 other AJI members recently completed a three-week course at the Radio Netherlands Training Center on how new media can support independent journalism.

He said that although Indonesia’s media had enjoyed 12 years of relative freedom since President Suharto stepped down on May 21, 1998, it did not mean that the threat was gone.

AJI Jakarta sees editorial interference by media owners as the new threat to press freedom. In a discussion the group organized in March, media analyst Ignatius Haryanto said “media conglomerate owners have become a threat because they now exercise the control that the government had in the old days.”

Potential threat to independent journalism?/Anton Muhajir

The media industry grew exponentially after 1998 when the government gave up its tight control through press permits and content reviews. There are now more than 2,000 radio stations, 1,000 print publications (magazines, tabloids and newspapers), 115 television stations and a growing number of online news portals. However, about 10 prominent business groups control the majority.

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