Gov’t Committed to Simplifying Regulations

President Jokowi poses for a picture with Constitutional Court Justices in Jakarta Tuesday (28/1). Photo by: PR/Jay.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has called on relevant parties to work with the Government in achieving the vision on law enforcement.

“Our big vision is to create law which is flexible, simple, competitive, and responsive in order to bring social justice for all Indonesian people as mandated by our Constitution,” President Jokowi said in his remarks at the Constitutional Court in Jakarta, Tuesday (28/1).

On that occasion, the President also conveyed challenges and opportunities for the nation in the future.

The world, he added, is undergoing very rapid changes with more complex challenges and tougher competition. “We should act faster and be more dynamic. We must simplify (the laws). We must cut down complexities to become a nation with competitiveness on the global stage,” he said.

The founding fathers of the nation, the President added, formulated the 1945 Constitution as a state constitution to regulate very fundamental matters.

“We have opportunities and flexibility to create implementing provisions to respond to changes and to win the competition,” President Jokowi said, adding that there are many inconsistent and overly rigid implementing provisions which present difficulties for the nation to win the competition.

The President went on to say that the Government, along with the House of Representatives (DPR) continues develop a favorable legal system, including by synchronizing various laws through the Omnibus Law.

“Through the Omnibus Law, various provisions in dozens of laws will be revoked, simplified, and synchronized,” the President said, adding that the Government is currently drafting the Omnibus Law for Tax and Omnibus Law for Job Creation and will immediately submit them to the DPR.

Omnibus law, the President added, has been widely applied in various countries such as the United States and the Philippines.

“This is a strategy for regulatory reforms. Our law is expected to be simpler, more flexible, responsive and ready to face the era of competition and the era of change,” the President said.

In addition to improving the law, the President added, the Government also continues to streamline many other regulations.

“I got a report saying that there are 8,451 central government regulations and 15,985 regional regulations. We have hyper regulations which trap us in complexity,” the President said, adding that he has instructed relevant officials to simplify government regulations, presidential regulations, ministerial regulations, directorate general regulations and regional regulations.

“We must respond to the rapidly-changing world,” the President concluded. (FID/EN).

Translated by: Ridwan Ibadurrohman
Reviewed by: Yuyu Mulyani