Page 166 - BUKU A CENTURY OF PARLIAMENTARY LIFE IN INDONESIA

THE NEW FACE OF INDONESIAN PARLIAMENT
(1959-1966)

Provisional Constitution of 1950, which took effect from 17 August 1950
to 5 July 1959, all of these institutions did not know about the People’s
Consultative Assembly.

However, there was an institution similar to the MPR, known as the Con-
stitutional Assembly, whose duties and authorities were similar to the
Assembly in the 1945 Constitution. More clearly, this Constitutional As-
sembly was known since the existence of the RIS Constitution and the
Provisional Constitution of 1950, from 27 December 1949 to 5 July 1950,
when the 1945 Constitution was re-enacted.

Going back to the issue of the formation of the
DPR, in a number of periods as mentioned ear-
lier, it was actually not available in practice, be- “Before the People’s
cause the 1945 Constitution at that time only had Consultative Assembly,
semantic value. The assembly had not been es- the People’s Legislative
tablished, so all of its duties and authority were
carried out fully by the President together with Assembly, and the
the Central National Committee (KNP). This was Supreme Advisory Council
indeed possible according to the 1945 Constitu- were formed according
tion based on Article IV of the Transitional Rules. It
stated: “Before the People’s Consultative Assem- to the Constitution; all
bly, the People’s Legislative Assembly, and the its powers were carried
Supreme Advisory Council were formed accord- out by the President with
ing to the Constitution; all its powers were carried
out by the President with the help of a National the help of a National
Committee” . Committee”.

The national committee in question was KNP
or the Central Indonesian National Committee,
which was inaugurated on 29 August 1945, ap-
proximately 11 days after the 1945 Constitution was ratified. The num-
ber of members was about 150 people, consisting of 27 people from
the Preparatory Committee for Indonesian Independence, including six
people who were added to the responsibility of President Soekarno as
chairman of the committee, and also people’s leaders from all groups,
backgrounds, and layers such as pangreh praja, scholars, the movement
groups, the youth, as well as the trade and commerce groups.

In the beginning, the committee’s position was merely as an assistant
to the President, which was only to provide considerations and sugges-
tions. From Article IV of the Transitional Rules of the 1945 Constitution,

dpr.go.id 159