Chaos inside Indonesia’s parliament

Significant decisions in the Indonesian Parliament are being made in an unclear and unaccountable way, according to a new study from The Australian National University. The public perception of Indonesia's political parties ruling by iron hand over party members couldn't be further from the truth, says Stephen Sherlock from the Crawford School of Public Policy. In fact, he says, it is the Indonesian parliament's committees that are making the big decisions, and doing so without proper debate and with a lack of transparency. "There's a common misconception about the role of political parties in the Indonesian parliament," Sherlock said. "There's an idea that there is a very powerful discipline exercised by the central leadership of the political parties over their members in parliament. "But my findings show that when we're talking about the nitty gritty of policy discussion - the details of legislation, for example - then largely there's a free-for-all. There is very little discipline exercised by the central party machine over their representatives in parliament." - Sherlock says that if the Indonesian political system is to get serious about reform, it needs to think about two things.