TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The House of Representatives (DPR) ethics council has further damaged its image by approving a request to clear former House Speaker Setya Novanto's name. In the first place, the council was not serious in handling the 'Papa wants shares' case, and now it has made another blunder by agreeing to this odd request.
Setya, who is now chairman of the Golkar Party, asked for his name to be cleared on the basis of a Constitutional Court ruling issued on September 7, granting his request for a review of the Electronic Information and Transactions Law. He challenged the article on the use of electronic information and documents as legal evidence.
The constitutional judges granted Setya's request and added a provision that electronic recordings made by individuals cannot be admitted as evidence in court. This was the basis for the ethics council restoration of Setya Novanto's good name. Based on a recording of a conversation made by the CEO of gold-mining company Freeport Indonesia, Setya was accused of violating the parliamentary code of ethics because he asked for Freeport shares.
The restoration of his good name is rather strange because Setya's case was related to ethics, while the Constitutional Court ruling was a legal matter, related only to the law enforcement process. An amendment to the Electronic Information and Transactions Law would not automatically remove the same provision in a regulation related to a code of ethics.
The DPR has yet to revise DPR Regulation No. 2/2015 on Ethics Council Proceedings. Article 27 Section (d) of this regulation clearly states that electronic recordings are valid evidence. This article describes the types of evidence, namely information that can be read, seen or heard. This information can be in any physical form, on paper as well as on electronic recordings.
Even if the DPR regulation were changed, it would still be difficult to clear Setya Novanto's name. In order to ensure legal certainty, ethical and legal rules cannot be applied retroactively. If this principle were violated, chaos would ensue in enforcing the law and ethics. Many people who broke the law or ethical regulations would have to be released or their names cleared because of the change in the regulations. When Setya Novanto was tried at an ethics hearing, the rule on recordings as legal evidence was clearly still in force.
The ethics council has also been inconsistent on this issue because it had never issued a ruling on the Setya scandal. The case, based on a report from Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Sudirman Said, was closed on December 26 last year without a ruling because Setya had already resigned as DPR speaker.
The decision to halt the proceedings without a decision was a mistake because Setya was tried as a member of the House, and not as a DPR speaker. The council should have still issued a ruling and, if necessary, punished Setya by dismissing him from the DPR. Now the council has made another blunder by restoring his good name. What is there to restore if the council never passed a ruling on Setya?
This strange development shows even more clearly that the ethics council cannot be relied on to discipline legislators in the DPR. The body, consisting of representatives of political parties at the DPR, cannot be objective or free of political interests. The Setya Novanto case is a mirror we can use to see the ugly face of this legislative body. (*)
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