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Govt Finishes Revisions To Convoluted Regulation
Arientha Primanita | April 24, 2011

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The government has completed its revisions to a law that Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi says will detail new arrangements for mass organizations.

The 1985 Law on Mass Organizations has been criticized by human rights watchdogs for containing articles that are incompatible with the Constitution.

Regulators generally dismiss the law for being frustratingly convoluted, which provides any organization under investigation plenty of legal leeway to avoid being disbanded.

“We have completed revisions to this law and the government regulation. We will soon request the House of Representatives to conduct deliberations over these revisions,” Gamawan told the Jakarta Globe. He did not provide any specifics regarding the revisions in the law.

He said revisions to the law were included in the year’s National Legislation Program.

“The current law details a long and complicated process [to ban an organization]. With the revisions, we hope to make the procedures shorter. We will also deal with illegal mass organizations which conduct violations. No warning will be required in their cases.”

He refused to elaborate on the revisions but acknowledged that the people’s perception was that the government was not doing enough to clamp down on mass organizations that were openly conducting violence.

“We monitor all these groups. Not all of them are bad,” Gamawan said.

Under the current law, the state is required to issue warnings to the leaders of an organization and summon them for clarification before any steps can to be taken to freeze the organization.

It is only possible to freeze an organization following a recommendation to do so by the Supreme Court. Once a freeze is in place, the organization must either conform to recommendations made by the government or risk being disbanded and officially outlawed.

Lawmaker Arif Wibowo, from the Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle (PDI-P), said that House Commission II, which oversees home affairs, would take extra care during deliberations of revisions to the law.

“We will be referring to the Constitution, which states that all people have the freedom to associate, gather and form unions,” Arif said.