Members of the newly elected House of Regional Representatives receive Orientation

New members are reading handbooks and information material on human development.

Ella Giri Komala, a woman representative from West Java Province during a debate on relations between the House of Regional Representatives and House of Representatives.

As part of its assistance to the House of Regional Representatives, the UNDP Parliamentary Support Programme provided an orientation for the 132 newly elected members. This capacity building programme was conducted in two groups on October 30^th-31^st and November 6^th-8^th, 2009at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Jakarta. The Speaker, Irman Gusman and Vice Speaker, Laode Ida, provided opening speeches, followed by addresses from UNDP’s Resident Representative, El-Mostafa Benlamlih and UNDP’s Country Director, Hakan Bjorkman.

“UNDP provides ongoing assistance to the Indonesian parliament to ensure that the Indonesian parliamentarians have the necessary capacity and conduct their work effectively as representatives of their constituents,” El-Mostafa Benlamlih said in his address.

Experts on parliamentary work were shared their expertise in the orientation. Coordinated by UNDP, the experts also prepared concise and easy to read handbooks which were distributed to the members. During the two-day orientation, essential parliamentary issues such as transparency and accountability were debated. Other important topics such as constituent relations, House working mechanisms, gender in parliament, parliamentary code of ethics, and media relations were also presented and discussed.

The event received a very positive feedback from the House members. “This orientation is complimentary to the orientation conducted by the House Secretariat, and I am positive we will greatly benefit from it. We would like to thank UNDP for continuously supporting our members with its technical assistance and substantial knowledge,”  the House Speaker said. During the various sessions, the members used the opportunity for lively question and answer sessions with the experts. “Thank you for all the support throughout this orientation, the topics presented were helpful in introducing the parliamentary work. I also look forward to more of UNDP’s strengthening democracy activities,” said Mervin Sadipun Komber, a regional representative from West Papua Province.

In addition to the sessions on parliamentary work, the UNDP Parliamentary Support Programme introduced other human developmental issues to the new members. Emil Salim, the former minister of environment and Prof. Harkristuti from the University of Indonesia presented the MDGs and international commitments. Mas Achmad Santosa and Haryono Umar from the Indonesian Corruption Eradication Commission shared their experience on explained how the members of parliament can be proactive participate in preventing and eradicating corruption. “We are very pleased with this orientation programme, because we have gained excellent knowledge about human development that probably most of us have not been aware before.” said Bambang Soeroso, a representative from Bengkulu Province.

Right to left: House Speaker Irman Gusman, UNDP Resident Represetnative El-Mostafa Benlamlih, UNDP Parliamentary Adviser Frank Feulner, National Project Director Adam Bachtiar, and UNDP Programme Manager Irman Lanti