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These days, few people in their right minds would put the words “House of Representatives members” and “decorum” in the same sentence. As recent events attest, legislators are not only peddling influence for pecuniary gains, they are also not above going into a brawl during a House session.

Nineteen former and current legislators have now been accused of accepting bribes worth Rp 500 million ($54,500) from certain quarters for voting Miranda Goeltom to the position of Bank Indonesia senior deputy governor in 2004. Some of these lawmakers have been arrested and now spend most of their time either in court facing prosecutors or awaiting trial. Others somehow managed to get re-elected last year and at present continue to discharge their constitutional duties, but no doubt they’re already beginning to feel the heat.

The House Ethics Council, some of whose members have served on the nine-party inquiry into the Bank Century bailout, sees nothing wrong with legislators being linked in a bribery case that remains unresolved. After all, the council maintains, the legislators in question are not guilty of anything until proven otherwise by a court of law.

However, some of those very same people refuse to apply the same principle on the case of Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, whom they plan to boycott when she appears at the House until law enforcers look into her alleged misconduct in the Bank Century scandal.

Behaving like spoiled children denied of their fix for sweets, legislators have now threatened to deny the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) of its operational funds if they deem the antigraft body’s Bank Century investigation is moving too slow.

Not surprisingly, the late Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid once “apologized” for calling legislators primary school children by saying, “What I really meant was that they are actually prekindergarten kids.”

Last week, legislators resorted to quasi blackmail by threatening to “state an opinion” if, again, law enforcers failed to move swiftly on the Bank Century case. Exercising that right could ultimately lead to what opposition legislators have been seeking all along: the impeachment of Vice President Boediono in connection with the bank rescue.

The move came as dissension prevailed among the dissenters: members of the Ethics Council have now moved against its chairman, Gayus Lumbuun. In delivering a no-confidence statement against Lumbuun, they accused him of being “authoritarian,” a trait that the public readily associates with legislators.

Meanwhile, the House, whose members were sworn in last October, has set itself a target of passing 70 bills this year. So far, legislators have begun to discuss only seven of them. The previous House averaged 38 laws a year. Though the figure looks impressive, it’s a fact that many of them were flawed and were subsequently revoked by the Constitutional Court.

Many attribute the dismal performance of the current legislators to their overzealousness in pursing the Bank Century case. Hamdi Muluk, a professor of psychology at the University of Indonesia, describes the lawmakers’ attitude as part of their “immaturity and excessive obsession with power.” Muluk, obviously no fan of the current House members, has dismissed them as “amateur politicians who cannot control their emotions.” Elected by the people, they end up being troublemakers with an inflated view of themselves. Judging by what they have done so far, they seem keener in creating problems in order for them to be perceived by the media as providing solutions.

Lately, House members seem to have appeared on the radar of UI psychologists, one of who, Sarlito Wirawan Sarwono, holds lawmakers in low esteem. As Sarlito sees it, “They are smart but have no sense of ethics. They are egoists, never listen to other people’s opinions and are self-righteous.” That just about sums up the general public’s opinion of legislators, though that means little as we still have to put up with them for the next four years or so.

Last year, analysts pointed out that the new House held much promise, as most of its members were not only better educated but also younger than their predecessors. “They carry no political baggage from the past and, as such, are expected to be devoid of factional or sectarian interests,” an analyst said. It didn’t take long for analysts to be proven wrong. There are many things we feel disgusted about in this world. In Indonesia it is politics, which, for some time to come, is expected to continue producing nothing but new wine in old bottles.

 

Taufik Darusman is a veteran Jakarta-based journalist.