REPUBLIKA.CO.ID,MALANG -- Muhammadiyah, the second largest Muslim mass organization in Indonesia, is to ask the Constitutional Court (MK) to conduct judicial reviews on a number of laws affecting the economy considered detrimental to the state and the people, its leader said. "A Muhammadiyah team is currently still studying the laws more thoroughly before they are submitted to the Constitutional Court for judicial reviews," Muhammadiyah chairman, Din Syamsuddin, said in Malang on Saturday.
Speaking to reporters after opening a gathering titled "Focus Group Discussion on and Familiarization with the National Security Bill" at the Malang Muhammadiyah University (UMM), Din said among the laws that needed to be reviewed were the laws on oil and gas, minerals and coal, and those on banking and investment.
He said these laws had actually been under Muhammadiyah`s scrutiny for some time as they had led to economic disparity or distortions that amounted to betrayals of the Indonesian nation`s original ideals.
If those laws concerning development of the country`s natural and economic resources were not revised, they would become "time bombs" threatening the Indonesian people`s very existence. Citing an example, Din said the public would soon be compelled to replace premium gasoline with pertamax whereas pertamax was a foreign product.
The laws on investment, oil and gas, minerals and coal had been initiated and passed "all of a sudden" without the involvement of many stakeholders, including mass organizations, he said. Many points in those laws were detrimental to the state and people and this was the reason Muhammadiyah would have them subjected to judicial review, Din said.
"We do not reject foreign investment but our natural resources should not be exploited by foreigners for their own profit and without any significant benefit for the Indonesian people," he said.
The government, Din said, had allowed foreign interests to gain control over three strategic economic areas, namely energy, banking and telecommunications. "Foreign capital is now controlling more than 50 percent of economic resources which are vital interest to the majority of Indonesians," according to Din.
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