Jokowi assures investors after court rules passing of jobs law unconstitutional

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has promised businesses that their investments will not be affected by the recent Constitutional Court ruling on the Job Creation Law, saying his administration would immediately work on a do-over of the lawmaking process.

The procedure of passing the law — the key legislative item in the President’s ambitious yet controversial reform agenda — was recently declared unconstitutional by the court, which also ruled that the government and the House of Representatives must start the lawmaking process again from scratch within two years. If they fail to do so, the law will be permanently repealed and all the previous laws it has replaced must be reinstated. In the meantime, the law remains effective.

“In a democratic nation that is based on the rule of law, the government respects and will immediately implement what has been ruled by the Constitutional Court,” Jokowi said in a press conference on Monday, in his first official response to Thursday’s ruling.

“I have instructed the coordinating ministers and other related ministers to immediately follow up on the ruling as soon as possible.”

The ruling was a major blow to Jokowi’s bid to cut red tape and bring in investment to Indonesia. Economists feared it would bring back business uncertainty, especially as interest from foreign investors has been steadily growing in Indonesia as an attractive investment destination.

Jokowi, however, gave an assurance that the ruling clearly said the law was still in effect pending the lawmaking do-over.

“All material and substance in the law and [existing implementing] regulations remain in effect without any provisions being revoked or declared invalid by the court,” he said. “Therefore, I assure businesses and investors, both domestic and international, that the investments that have been made and investments that are being processed and will be in process are safe and secure.”

This, he said, did not affect his commitment to easing the process of doing business, which will eventually create jobs.

Dubbed an omnibus as it was drafted to revise and combine 78 laws into 1,000 pages of legislation, the Job Creation Law was passed in October last year. The government said more than 43,000 regulations needed to be streamlined in order to improve the nation’s competitiveness in the region.

But the court found that the process of drafting the jobs law was flawed because the Constitution mandates that lawmaking be carried out in accordance with prevailing procedures laid in the 2011 law on the drafting of laws and regulations, which does not recognize such a concept as an omnibus law. The court said the jobs law deliberation also lacked transparency and denied public participation.

Parts of the law, meanwhile, have been viewed by labor and environmental groups as detrimental to labor rights and environmental protections.

Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto said the ruling did not cancel out the impact of the jobs law, such as the operations of the Indonesian Investment Authority

(INA) because the government issued the implementing regulation prior to the ruling.

He said it also would not affect the four newly established special economic zones (SEZs), which have lured Rp 90 trillion (US$6.2 billion) worth of investment commitments, or the changes to labor and wage laws.

The new online single submission (OSS), which streamlines the business-licensing process, also remains operational and it will still be used by the government to process new licenses or the extension of existing ones.

For micro, small and medium enterprises, Airlangga said, it meant that the current relaxation in obtaining licenses, as well as certain facilities to get halal certificates and the ones that allow the government to buy their products and services for official state procurement were maintained so far.

Since the start of its implementation on Aug. 4, the OSS has issued nearly 380,000 licenses, of which an overwhelming majority are for micro enterprises.

“Next, the government will write a letter to the House speakership to list the jobs law revision as a priority in the 2022 National Legislation Program [Prolegnas],” Airlangga said in a press briefing on Monday.

Coordinating Legal, Political and Security Affairs Minister Mahfud MD, meanwhile, said the government was committed to completing the revision sooner than the deadline set by the court. (dis)

More than 5 million people have died worldwide since a novel coronavirus epidemic broke out two years ago in Wuhan, China. The virus spread rapidly around the world, placing an enormous burden on healthcare systems.

More children are at a greater risk of infectious diseases as the pandemic has disrupted the delivery of healthcare services, including routine immunization programs. The economic crisis caused by COVID-19 has forced millions of people to lose their jobs and live in poverty.

The pandemic has opened our eyes to significant weaknesses in our society in responding to a health emergency. Healthcare systems were not ready to handle the coronavirus outbreak. This pandemic has shown that unpreparedness for a medical surge can impact various aspects of people’s lives that go beyond health matters.

As COVID-19 may not be the world’s last health emergency, the question now is: Are we ready to face the next pandemic?

A surge in COVID-19 cases in some countries and the recent confirmation of new Variant of Concern (VOC) Omicron by the World Health Organization’s Technical Advisory Group on Virus Evolution give us evidence that the coronavirus pandemic is far from over. A lack of solidarity among nations has been blamed for this prolonged virus crisis, which was worsened by ineffective global health architecture.

During the Group of 20 Summit in Italy on Oct. 30, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo conveyed the strong message that to better deal with future emergencies, the world needed to reorganize the global health architecture. Jokowi first made this call during the United Nations General Assembly in September.

It is now expected that the special session of the World Health Assembly (WHA), now underway until Thursday, can serve as a starting point for countries to build a stronger global framework to prevent future health emergencies.

The special session, set to be attended by representatives of 194 WHO member states, including Indonesia, comes as a result of deep concerns among health leaders over the world’s laxity for a global pandemic. It is only the second time that the WHA has held a special session. The first was held in Geneva on Nov. 9, 2006, following the death of then-WHO director general Lee Jong-wook on May 22, 2006. During the special session, Margaret Chan was appointed new director general.

This year’s special session is the first to deal with a substantive issue. Although this is called a “special session”, the meeting has the power of regular sessions of the WHA. Constituted by all 194 WHO member states, the special session has the capacity to make recommendations, decisions and resolutions, just like a regular WHA, said WHO principal legal officer Steve Solomon in a press briefing on Nov. 10.

Health expert Tjandra Yoga Aditama said among the key issues that needed to be highlighted by the Indonesian delegation during the special session included the possible revision of the International Health Regulations (IHR). Countries should review the IHR to see whether it remains relevant or needs fundamental changes because it does not have any regulations linked to a pandemic, such as COVID-19, he asserted.

According to Tjandra, the one and only extraordinary event terminology being used in the IHR is the Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), while in fact, it is the pandemic that has devastated the world. In 2011, the International Health Regulations Review Committee concluded that “the world is ill-prepared” against the H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic. Ten years later, in 2021, the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response declared that the world was not ready for the COVID -19 pandemic.

“It means that despite the 10year implementation of the IHR, the world is still not yet ready to deal with a pandemic,” Tjandra told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

For better global preparedness and response, there likely needs to be a more comprehensive, stronger legal framework on pandemic.

“As a WHO member state, which also holds the G20 presidency, Indonesia has an important role and can play a strategic leadership in the review of the IHR and development of a pandemic framework convention to save the world,” said Tjandra, former acting director for communicable diseases at the WHO South-East Asia Region Office (SEARO).

In their fight against future outbreaks, countries need a binding treaty or agreement because in the past, voluntary mechanisms often failed to solve challenges. Such a treaty or agreement could set out high-level, agreed principles to strengthen solidarity and equity to attain health for all, according to WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

As decided by the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response in the 75th session of the General Assembly’s Informal Plenary Meeting in May this year, the three-day special session will only deal with one issue: The potential benefits of a new WHO convention, agreement or other international instrument for pandemic preparedness and response.

Jaouad Mahjour, WHO assistant director general for emergency preparedness and IHR, said some member states had conceded that several areas of concern — such as government and leadership, political commitments, sustainable financing for pandemic preparedness and response, broader sharing and use of biomaterials and their benefits, as well as community engagement — were crucial in the global fight against a pandemic.

Certainly, countries may not get a new global framework on pandemic preparedness and response during the special session, as it will be a three-day event only. Building a new framework requires a long process, which includes the development of a zero draft for negotiations that will not likely start until next year’s WHA.

But with its enormous impact on all aspects of people’s life, Tjandra said, the current pandemic should become a catalyst for a systematic and fundamental change to the global health architecture to prevent future outbreaks. And there is no way that countries can achieve this target anytime soon, unless they start to act now.