Mining bill negates local legislative body and local people

Economist Revrisond Baswir from the Gadjah Mada University said that the mining bill gave too much power to the central government, and disregarded the roles of local people and local legislative bodies.

At a glance, Revrisond said, the mining bill gave a misleading impression by stating too much about people's economy, but nothing in its articles showed that it gave power to local administrations or local legislative bodies.

The bill did not mention the authority of local administrations and only said that matters pertaining to local authority would be governed by ministerial decrees.

"At a glance, this mining bill seems to side with the people's economy. For instance, there is a special article mentioning a partnership between mining business and the development of local people.

"However, if we look into every article, there is no single article that governs the issuance of regulations by local administrations, but one or two articles that state that those matters would be governed by the minister," he said at a public debates on the general mining bill on Thursday.

Worse still, it is mentioned at article 3 verse 4 that the minister had the power to review and approve regulations issued by local administrations. "This puts local legislative body under the minister."

Meanwhile, Chalid Muhammad, coordinator of the National Mining Advocacy Network (JATAM), noted that there was no big difference in philosophy between the existing mining law No. 11/1967 with the new bill.

"There is no big difference between law no. 11/1967 and this general mining bill. This bill is still exploitative, pro-investors, and put local people as no more than the object. Therefore, this bill needs to be reviewed and re-written," he said.

Responding to Chalid's argument, the chairman of the bill drafting team, Daud Silalahi, said that the bill was still being drafted, and there was still plenty of rooms to discuss it and review it to accommodate the interests of all parties.

But Chalid disagreed with Daud's statement, noting that it would be useless to accommodate the interests of many parties if the essence of the bill itself did not side with the people, but with the investors.

"It's better to postpone it," Chalid said.

But Daud noted that the bill needed to be completed soon and be deliberated by the House to be passed into law, to replace the outdated 1967 mining law.

Daud explained a new mining law was badly needed to anticipate the implementation of the autonomy law and fiscal balance law that would come into force starting early 2001. Otherwise, local administrations would let excessive exploitation of their own lands as there is no clear guidelines on their authority. (*)