HOUSE TO CARRY ON DELIBERATING BILL ON CRIMINAL CODE

By Andi Abdussalam

Jakarta, Feb 24 (Antara) - The House of Representatives is likely to continue deliberating the Bill on Criminal Code (KUHP) and the Bill on the Criminal Code Procedures (KUHAP) despite calls to postpone it as its current term is almost ended.          Speaker of the House of Representatives (DPR) Marzuki Alie has stated that it is urgent for the law-makers to finish the deliberations of the bills in their current term because they still have five months before the legislative election was held on April 9, 2014.          The House Speaker argued that there was nothing wrong to deliberate draft laws in the durrent term as long as the relevant parties such as legal experts and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) were involved.         "By involving the KPK and many other parties such as legal experts, articles in the bills which have the potential to weaken  the KPK, can be identified and can be scrapped," the DPR Speaker said here on Sunday.          There is a suspicion that the bills on the KUHP and the on KUHAP will weaken the KPK. Some quarters viewed that certain articles in the bills have the potential to weaken authority of the KPK and eliminate its rights to conduct examinations, investigations and prosecution of (corruption) crime suspects.          Thus, they called on the DPR to pospone deliberations of the bills as legislators in the House of Representatives are to end their current term. They argued that strategic issues should not be deliberated in a short deadline.