Indonesian Ethics Council to visit Greece amid controversy

Indonesian Ethics Council to visit Greece amid controversy

2010-10-20 05:12:34 GMT+7 (ICT)

JAKARTA, INDONESIA (BNO NEWS) -- The Indonesian Ethics Council on Tuesday unveiled its plans to visit Greece in order to learn about the Greek Parliament's ethics, the Jakarta Globe reported.

The visit was announced at a time that critics of the Center for Law and Policy Studies have strongly accused lawmakers of wasting millions of dollars of taxpayer money on overseas trips that are often cataloged as junkets.

"An ethics council has been used since the time of ancient Rome. The information can't be accessed through the Internet," Nudirman Munir, deputy chairman of the council, said to justify the visit.

The Center for Law and Policy Studies also criticized that although legislators undertook 143 comparative studies abroad, using taxpayers' money, from 2004 to 2009, only three reports on them were completed.

The non-governmental agency further said that such reports are too short and include only basic information which can be easily found on the Internet. One of them, a single-page report, included only the tour schedule.

Nudirman claimed that the visit is intended for the council to learn from Greece whether or not the ethics council could dismiss legislators if they failed to answer summons, whether legislators could leave sessions by raising their hands and how issues and policies, including the death penalty, are treated in other countries.

"This overseas study is compulsory, otherwise we will become a big frog in a small pond and so we are not fooled by NGOs (non-governmental organizations)," Nudirman said.

The Indonesian Forum for Budget Transparency informed that $13.6 million is allocated to lawmakers for official overseas travels in 2010. This represents a 30 percent increase over the 2009 state budget.

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