Informasi Beasiswa

Not just a piece of paper

http://insideindonesia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1232&Itemid=47

The state’s requirements for marriage registration disadvantage poor rural women

Maria Platt

No need for ID: most women in rural Lombok have few interactions with officialdom Maria Platt

Una sits in a small room at the back of one of my friends’ houses in the small village of Teduk in western Lombok. Poverty is endemic in Teduk, as in many parts of Lombok, and consequently many women like Una work odd jobs, earning about Rp10,000 (approximately $A1.30) a day to help make ends meet. While we chat over tea and snacks Una’s youngest child is sprawled across her lap.

I discover that Una has three other children from her first marriage, which ended about five years ago. When her marriage ended her husband decided that he would take the three oldest children, while Una would care for her daughter, who was still being breast fed at the time. Even though Una still sees her children from time to time, as they still live in Teduk, she misses them terribly. Una told me that along with their three oldest children, her husband also took most of the household possessions, leaving her no option but to return home to her parents’ house with little other than her youngest child.

The power of registration

With no marriage certificate, Una had little legal traction should she have wished to take her case to the religious courts, which deal with family law matters in Indonesia. While she could have applied for an isbath nikah (akin to a retrospective marriage certificate), this is costly exercise. At Rp256,000 (approximately $A34), plus the expense of a 50 kilometre round trip, this option is out of the question for a woman like Una.

Through the religious courts women have the opportunity to initiate divorce and to deal with issues such as child custody and the division of marital assets in an equitable manner. If Una had had access to the religious courts she might have been able to obtain joint custody of her other children and receive half of the assets she and her husband had acquired during their marriage.

Women like Una who don’t have their marriages registered also lack access to formal legal rights

For women like Una who do not have access to formal state law, decisions about divorce are mostly made by their husbands. In the rare instance that a woman challenges her former husband’s decision, or is brave enough to initiate divorce herself, she can approach village authorities such as the kepala dusun (hamlet head) or Tuan Guru (local Islamic leader) for assistance. Yet leaders base their advice upon local interpretations of Islam and adat, which in Lombok tend to be patriarchal in nature. So in these informal settings women’s chances of securing their marital rights are diminished. Consequently, women like Una who don’t have their marriages registered also lack access to a range of formal legal rights.

Una’s story is not unique in Lombok, where levels of marriage registration are low. It has been estimated that around 70 per cent of marriages in Lombok do not get registered. There are various reasons for this, including the highly bureaucratised nature of the process and its cost. The amount charged for a marriage certificate can be arbitrary - ranging anywhere from Rp150,000 to 600,000 (approximately $A20-80). A friend of mine who was married recently told me of how she was charged Rp600,000 for her marriage certificate. As a primary school teacher she earns only Rp200,000 (about $A26) per month and her husband earns a similar wage. As a result they are still paying off their marriage certificate and won’t receive it until they have paid in full. Therefore for people dwelling in rural Lombok, many of whom earn less than $A2 a day, even affording a marriage certificate is almost unimaginable, especially given that the extensive marriage celebrations required by adat may deplete a family’s entire savings.

Bureaucratic obstacles

Yet another major barrier for those wishing to register their marriage is the bureaucratic requirements of the state. There are two agencies that deal with marriage registrations - the Kantor Urusan Agama (KUA or Office for Religious Affairs), which handles Muslim marriage registration, and the Kantor Catatan Sipil (KCS or Civil Registration Office) for non-Muslims.

For Muslims, who make up the majority of Lombok’s inhabitants, the KUA requires one of two forms of documentation in order to register a marriage. The first, and the preferred form, is an ijazah (graduation certificate), while the other is a Kartu Tanda Penduduk (KTP or official identity card).

In Lombok, which is located in one of Indonesia’s poorest provinces, many people have had little access to formal education until recently. This means that people who are currently of marriageable age (in their late teens and early twenties) may have never been to school or progressed only to mid-primary school level. In such circumstances it is rare for someone to have a graduation certificate.

While a graduation certificate is the preferred form of identification, as it is thought to reflect most accurately a person’s name and date of birth, a KTP is also acceptable. However, not all people in rural Lombok have a KTP. The people who own a KTP are usually those engaged in formal employment or who regularly go outside their village for business, and who therefore need a KTP as a form of official identification. In Lombok, the majority of such people are men. Women tend to work in jobs that do not require travel outside the village, like petty trading or casual labour such as cutting grass for livestock feed or working in the fields. Women in these situations have almost no need for a KTP. What’s more, a KTP costs around Rp25,000 (approximately $A3.30), payable every five years - another unwanted additional cost to bear in already cash-strapped households.

Many rural residents of Lombok lack access to a formal legal identity, and so are also shut out of formal processes of marriage and divorce

The registration process also requires that both the bride and groom provide a passport size photo, which will appear in their respective marriage books. For many people living in small villages, merely obtaining the photo can be a costly exercise as it requires a return trip to the nearest photographic store, which could be a considerable distance away. Furthermore the cost of around Rp8,000 (approximately $A1) per person for a set of passport photos may be equivalent to nearly a day’s wage for people in a rural setting.

In short, the state process expects that people have a formal legal identity, which can be costly to obtain. The reality for many rural residents of Lombok, therefore, is that they lack access to a formal legal identity, and so are also shut out of formal processes of marriage and divorce.

An Indonesia-wide problem

Access to the courts for family matters is not limited to Lombok: it has been estimated that 80 per cent of Indonesians are not able to engage with the legal system, largely owing to financial constraints. A joint project conducted recently by the Indonesian religious courts and the Australian family court indicates that poverty is a major barrier for people wishing to access the religious courts, especially single mothers.

Non-registration of marriage has implications not only for the couple (especially the woman), should the marriage end in divorce. Parents need to show a marriage certificate to obtain an official birth certificate for children of the marriage. This has follow-on effects for children in terms of establishing their legal identity and their access to education, because a birth certificate is also officially required to enrol a child in school. This official requirement can be problematic for some families, even though many children without birth certificates still manage to attend school.

The afternoon is getting late, and Una has to return home to her parents’ house where she still lives, to prepare the evening meal. During our conversation Una has told me that she is getting married in two days time to a new husband who is a local of her village but now works in the neighbouring island of Sumbawa. Despite her problems with her first husband it is unlikely that Una’s second marriage will be registered either, largely because of the mismatch between the bureaucratic requirements of the state and the lives of rural women such as Una. Women like Una, whose marital rights are not guaranteed, can only hope for the best in their marriages. ii

Maria Platt (mariaplatt@hotmail.com) is a PhD student at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University.

Inside Indonesia 97: Jul-Sep 2009

East Timor Says It Won’t Approve Woodside LNG Plan

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&sid=aaPoKDH.cNGI&refer=australia

By Angela Macdonald-Smith

May 6 (Bloomberg) -- The East Timor government said it doesn’t intend to approve plans that Woodside Petroleum Ltd., Australia’s second-largest oil and gas producer, has said it will put forward to develop the Sunrise field in the Timor Sea.

Progress on the natural gas project has stalled, the Pacific nation said in an e-mailed statement today. Woodside’s partners in the venture include Royal Dutch Shell Plc and ConocoPhillips.

Perth-based Woodside said May 1 the Sunrise partners expect to reach an agreement in the second half on how to tap the field, choosing between a floating liquefied natural gas plant or piping the gas to Darwin in Australia for processing. The East Timor government said today it favors an onshore plant on its soil and is also considering leaving the field for future development.

“We have made it clear to Woodside our position,” the government said in the statement. “We have not, and do not intend to approve their development plans, no further engagement or negotiations will be entertained as stands.”

Australia and East Timor completed a treaty in February 2007 for the administration of the Sunrise field, which straddles a boundary between Australian waters and an area jointly managed by the two countries.

Woodside fell for the first time in five days, dropping 0.3 percent to A$42 in Sydney trading. The exchange’s benchmark energy index declined 0.7 percent.

‘Good Oilfield Practice’

Jon Ozturgut, vice-president of Sunrise LNG Development at Woodside, said in a May 1 interview that while East Timor would prefer the venture builds an LNG plant on its territory, the treaty requires the partners to choose the project design that offers the “best commercial advantage.”

The Sunrise venture “will work with the Timor-Leste and Australian governments to secure the timely approval of a field development plan to develop Greater Sunrise to the best commercial advantage, consistent with good oilfield practice,” Woodside spokesman Roger Martin said today in an e-mailed response to East Timor’s statement.

“It’s not just about making money,” East Timor’s Secretary of State for Natural Resources Alfredo Pires said in an interview today. “You need to look at the greater aspects of how resources should benefit the resource owners.”

That includes jobs and developing skills, he said by telephone from Dili. As East Timor is already receiving royalties from the ConocoPhillips-operated Bayu-Undan gas project, which sends fuel to Darwin for processing, there’s no financial imperative for the rapid development of Sunrise, he said.

‘Only Fair’

“The fact that one pipeline has gone already to Australia, we feel that it’s only fair that the other one comes to Timor- Leste,” Pires said. “We also have studies that confirm that the Timor-Leste option is much more viable than we had been led to believe.”

Woodside owns about 33 percent of Sunrise and is the operator, while Houston-based ConocoPhillips has a 30 percent stake, Woodside’s 34 percent-shareholder Shell owns 27 percent and Osaka Gas Co. holds 10 percent. The field, which lies 450 kilometers (280 miles) northwest of Darwin, is estimated to hold about 5.4 trillion cubic feet of gas and 240 million barrels of condensates, a type of light oil.

“Relationships are good” with East Timor, Woodside Chief Executive Officer Don Voelte told reporters in Perth on May 1. “They’re conciliatory, we’re working together and there has got to be opportunities for everybody.”

East Timor, where 41 percent of the people live on less than $1 a day, plans to use royalties from oil and gas projects to fund social development. The country started a petroleum fund in 2005, which now holds $4.6 billion.

To contact the reporter on this story: Angela Macdonald-Smith in Sydney at amacdonaldsm@bloomberg.net

At 107, Livermore centennial lightbulb is still a real live wire

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lightbulb5-2008may05,0,3217216,full.story

COLUMN ONE

Email Picture

Robert Durell / Los Angeles Times

Tom Bramell, a former Livermore fire chief, gazes reverently at the longest burning lightbulb in the world. The bulb uses four watts of power, and its carbon filament is protected by an airtight seal.

The low-watt firehouse bulb has been burning continuously since 1901. It's generated awe and respect, even among the boosters of a Texas rival.

By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 5, 2008

LIVERMORE, CALIF. -- Five years after his retirement, ex-firefighter Tom Bramell still likes to visit Station No. 6 for old times' sake, whistling in amazement at all the changes -- the strange faces and slick high-tech engines.

But one thing remains exactly the same, and it's what Bramell misses the most about his firefighting days. The sturdy little object hangs from the ceiling in the firehouse's engine bay, emitting its familiar faint orange glow.

He calls it the long-lived lightbulb of Livermore.

That's actually something of an understatement.

At 107 years and counting, the low-watt wonder with the curlicue carbon filament has been named the planet's longest continuously burning bulb by both Guinness World Records and Ripley's Believe It Or Not.

As objet d'art and enduring symbol of American reliability and ingenuity, it's been lauded by senators and presidents.

It boasts a website -- www.centennialbulb.org, drawing a million hits a year -- a historical society and even a webcam that allows curious fans to check on it 24 hours a day.

The Livermore lightbulb, you see, never gets turned off, which many suspect is the secret to its longevity.

Hanging 18 feet above the floor at the end of a black cloth-covered cord, the little light with the filament the width of a No. 2 pencil lead is unprotected by any lampshade.

Firefighters won't even dust it. Touch it, jokes one captain, and "you get your fingers chopped off."

They guard their light with a surge protector and have a diesel generator and a battery as backups. To them, the bulb is the embodiment of their always-on-duty ethic.

For years, Bramell was known around the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department as the keeper of the bulb, the unofficial curator and caretaker who fielded queries from the public and visits from tourists. Over time, he developed a boyish wonder at its craftsmanship and spunk. From a vantage point directly beneath the bulb, Bramell says, its filament even spells the word "on."

Livermore's bulb has burned for nearly a million hours. Even now, in its old age, Bramell will stack it against any New Age fluorescent, halogen or high-pressure sodium bulb out there.

"That bulb predates the atomic bomb and the birth of the automobile," said the onetime deputy chief. "I thought that for sure it was going to go out 35 years ago, but it fooled me. It fooled everyone."

Bramell said there are numerous theories on the bulb's longevity. "Most people just consider it a freak of engineering," he said. "But I believe the bulb has stayed alive so many years because the makers gave it a perfect seal, so no air gets inside the bulb to help disintegrate the carbon filament. This bulb operates in a vacuum and it doesn't burn hot. That's the secret."

In 1901, when the tiny bulb was first screwed into place inside a so-called hose cart house, it cast its light on a simpler era.

Back then, horse-pulled carts carried water to fires. The bulb burned day and night, hanging at eye level from a 20-foot cord. Its job: to break the darkness so firefighters responding to calls wouldn't have to fumble to light the wicks of their kerosene lanterns. Manufactured by the Shelby Electric Co. of Shelby, Ohio, the bulb soon outlived its maker, which closed in 1914.

Later, in the main firehouse, it illuminated more modern rigs as horses were replaced by gas-fed engines.

It didn't always receive kid-glove treatment.

Climbing atop their engines, firefighters returning from World War II and Korea often would give the bulb a playful swat for good luck. The next generation -- the Vietnam veterans and the younger kids -- used it as a target for Nerf basketball practice.

Then, in 1972, a local reporter checked records and interviewed old-timers to trace its history. Firefighters suddenly realized they had a treasure.

"The good-luck slaps and target practice stopped," Bramell recalls. "We figured, 'Wow, maybe we should take care of this bulb.' "

The bulb was soon featured in the book "On the Road with Charles Kuralt." "In a time when gadgets are forever falling apart or burning out or breaking up, it was kind of nice spending a day watching a dusty, 71-year-old lightbulb just go on and on," the newsman wrote. "If you're ever in Livermore and need reassurance, we recommend it."

Thousands took his advice, traveling to the East Bay community of 80,000 to see the bulb and sign its guest book. "Beats Vegas!" wrote one. And another: "How many firemen does it take to change a lightbulb in Livermore? None, it never needs changing."

Bramell has heard from ministers who sermonized about the bulb's enduring reliability and residents who say they use it as a litmus test for new friends: Those who "get" the light's significance show the wisdom and good judgment for lasting ties.

"This fragile thing that wasn't meant to last has outlived the company that made it, people who first screwed it in, people who have written about it and who have kept watch over it," said Edward Meyer, vice president of exhibits and archives for Ripley Entertainment. "They made this bulb right."

Several times, the last a few years ago, Ripley's offered to buy the bulb. The city's answer is a no-brainer: "Fat chance."

In July 1976, Livermore held its collective breath when it moved the bulb a short two miles from the old Fire Department headquarters to Station No. 6. There was a police escort -- sirens blaring, lights flashing.

Most nervous was the city electrician, faced with the delicate task of actually handling the bulb. For the trip, he built a wooden bulb box lined with cotton, Bramell said.

They moved the bulb, socket and all, cutting the cord to 4 feet. At the new site, as dozens looked on, the electrician made the connection and said a prayer.

Nothing happened.

"There was a gasp," Bramell said. "Folks said, 'What on earth have we done?' Then the electrician jiggled a switch and the bulb came on. And it's stayed on ever since."

In all, the bulb was out for 22 minutes -- a short period, the Ripley's folks say, that does not mar its continuous-use record.

There are doubters who question its pedigree, competitors who wait patiently for the light to flicker and die. There's Bud Kennedy, for example, a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Before Livermore's light was documented, the Texas bulb known as the Palace Theater Light was considered the world's oldest. It even received annual birthday wishes from radio host Paul Harvey.

Then Livermore and a "smart-aleck" reporter went and ruined things, Kennedy wrote in a 2001 column. So Fort Worth residents watched and waited -- ready, as one resident said, to yell "yee-hah!" when Livermore's light went dark.

"As far as I'm concerned, those bulb brains in Livermore can take their Centennial Light and go straight to . . . " Kennedy wrote. "Wait. They're already in California."

Kennedy visited the bulb last year, planning "to kick the wall and see if I could jiggle it out of its socket."

But being in its presence softened him. "The guys there consider the bulb a point of pride, as a symbol of firefighters everywhere," he said. "Who can argue with that?"

When the bulb turned 100 in 2001, Livermore officials threw a birthday party that drew 600 celebrators, many in turn-of-the-century attire.

Now they look forward to a 200th birthday bash.

"You want that light on," said Deputy Fire Chief Jeff Zolfarelli, the new bulb keeper. "As long as it doesn't go out on your watch. Nobody wants to be onboard when that happens."

john.glionna@latimes.com

Intolerance in Indonesia

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120880837027832281.html

OPINION

By SADANAND DHUME
FROM TODAY'S WALL STREET JOURNAL ASIA
April 22, 2008

In the global debate about the compatibility between Islam and democracy, Indonesia is often held up as an example of the possible. Ten years after General Suharto's downfall, the world's most populous Muslim country has institutionalized free elections and the peaceful transfer of power, nurtured a lively press, and rolled back a panoply of racist laws that once targeted the country's ethnic Chinese minority. But the ongoing persecution of the Ahmadiyya, a small Muslim sect founded in late 19th century India, underscores Indonesia's – and the Muslim world's – trouble guaranteeing a bedrock democratic value: freedom of conscience. Without it, the country's proud claim to be the world's third-largest democracy will remain lacking.

The most recent assault on the Ahmadiyya comes from a government body that manages to sound Orwellian and Kafkaesque at the same time – the Coordinating Board for Monitoring Mystical Beliefs in Society. Last Wednesday this august grouping recommended a ban on Ahmadiyya in Indonesia. The reason: Though Ahmadiyya Muslims revere the prophet Muhammad and follow the Quran, they also contend that their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835-1908), was a prophet as well. This contradicts the mainstream Islamic assertion that all divine revelation ended with Muhammad, the so-called – and it might be noted, self-proclaimed – "seal of the prophets."

Since arriving in Indonesia in the 1920s, Indonesia's tiny Ahmadiyya community, a fraction of the country's 200 million Muslims, had lived peacefully. Ahmadiyyas tend to emphasize education and reject the idea of violent jihad. But in 2005, the Council of Indonesian Ulama, a collection of powerful mullahs, dusted off an obscure 25-year-old religious ruling, or fatwa, and declared the community to be "deviant and misled." Since then mobs have sacked Ahmadiyya mosques while police stood by, local governments have flouted federal laws and imposed bans on Ahmadiyya worship, and leaders of a thuggish vigilante group, the Islamic Defenders Front, have publicly called for the sect's followers to be murdered. Through all this, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has dithered, preferring not to stick out his political neck for an unpopular cause.

Mr. Yudhoyono ought to know better. What's at stake is not merely the safety and well-being of a somewhat offbeat religious group but a much more fundamental question: What kind of country does Indonesia want to be? Will it be, as its founding fathers envisioned, a land where people of all faiths live as equals, or one where non-Muslims and heterodox Muslims are effectively second-class citizens? Will it be a country that respects an individual's right to worship as he pleases, or indeed not to worship at all, or one where such matters are determined by safari-suited officials and bearded clerics? Will it be ruled by the law or by the mob?

For now the signs don't augur well, for ironically the deepening of Indonesian democracy has gone hand in hand with a darkening intolerance. As the country's famously easygoing brand of folk Islam gives way to a triple-distilled orthodoxy imported from the Middle East – among the more noxious side-effects of globalization – the live-and-let-live attitude that underpinned Indonesian pluralism has come under sustained assault. In 21st century Indonesia, non-Muslims and heterodox Muslims can find themselves jailed for such medieval-sounding offenses as "being heretical," "tarnishing the purity of Arabic," or "denigrating religion." Christians often bear the brunt of these new attitudes. Christian groups estimate that 110 churches were forcibly closed between 2004 and 2007 alone, and permission to build new ones is increasingly hard to come by.

Belligerence toward religious minorities at home has gone hand in hand with a heightened sensitivity to insults, real and imagined, to Islam abroad. As though to make up for lost time, Indonesia has propelled itself to the front rows of the global culture wars between Islam and the West. During the cartoon crisis of 2006 the Danish embassy in Jakarta was among the first attacked. The following year mobs converged upon the offices of a toned down (no nudity) local edition of Playboy and forced it to relocate to the Hindu island of Bali. Earlier this month, Indonesia briefly blocked the popular video sharing website YouTube and the social networking site MySpace for allowing users to watch the movie "Fitna," Dutch Member of Parliament Geert Wilders's much-derided anti-Islam screed.

As Indonesia mulls the fate of its Ahmadiyyas, its leaders ought to draw lessons from others' mistakes. In 1974 the charismatic Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto sought to appease Pakistan's strident Islamists by declaring the Ahmadiyyas to be non-Muslims. Bhutto's placing of petty politics above principle is now generally regarded as a turning point in his country's long slide toward obscurantism and lawlessness. If this isn't enough, those perpetually exercised about guarding Islam's "image" ought to consider the irony that it is in Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Washington, rather than among their co-religionists in Karachi, Riyadh or Jakarta, that Ahmadiyya Muslims can live with dignity and practice their faith without fear.

Mr. Dhume is a fellow at the Asia Society in Washington, D.C. His book about the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia, "My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with an Indonesian Islamist," will be published by Text Publishing in Australia in May.

Nationalism vs. Islamism in West Java election?

http://www.thejakartapost.com/node/166571

Ahmad Junaidi , Jakarta | Thu, 04/17/2008 11:17 AM | Opinion

Barack Obama's recent comments about small town working-class voters can be used to understand Ahmad Heryawan and Dede Yusuf's win in the West Java gubernatorial election.

The strong Democratic Party's U.S. presidential candidate stated: "It's not surprising that they get bitter, they cling to... religion... as a way to explain their frustrations."

Indonesians, including the Sundanese -- the largest ethnic in West Java -- are now economically frustrated: Increasing prices of staple foods, kerosene shortages, long queues to buy cooking oil, high unemployment -- the list goes on.

Then, new faces -- Heryawan, nominated by the Islamist Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), and Dede, a former action film star and legislator of the Muslim-based National Mandate Party -- offer the "audacity of hope".

In their television campaign, Heryawan and Dede use -- it's not clear whether they actually have permission to do so -- a picture of Obama and say: "It's time for the youth to lead."

Meanwhile, the grand old parties, Golkar and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) came with old faces. Golkar supported Danny Setiawan, the incumbent West Java Governor, while PDI-P, chaired by former president Megawati Soekarnoputri, endorsed retired general Agum Gumelar.

Unlike the recent Jakarta gubernatorial election in which the two parties managed to win Fauzi Bowo, they could not come up with a candidate in West Java.

The nationalist parties did not learn from their success in defeating PKS in the Banten gubernatorial election and Tangerang regent where Ratu Atut and Ismeth Iskandar were elected as governor and regent respectively.

Many cities in West Java such as Bandung, Bekasi and Bogor are strongholds of the PKS. Directly-elected Depok Mayor Nurmahmudi Ismail was the party's former president.

Regencies in the provinces, such as Indramayu, Tasikmalaya and Cianjur, have recently approved sharia-inspired bylaws --although some non-governmental organizations criticized the regulations for violating women's rights.

Peaceful demonstrations joined by hundreds, up to thousands of students and mosques activists who demanded the establishment of caliphs regularly took place in those cities.

The rallies' participants mostly were not aware of the bloody history of caliphs as stated in a new translated book Kebenaran yang Hilang (The Missing Truths) by slain Egyptian author Farag Fouda.

They ignore the facts that three of the four caliphs, Umar, Ustman and Ali were killed. The youth supporters do not know that the absence of control over political power -- check and balances -- had created chaos in the succession in their favorite political system.

The fundamentalists do not believe vox populi, vox dei (The voice of the people is the voice of God), instead they prefer vox ulema, vox dei.

The West Java floating masses are surely not aware of the exclusive ideology of PKS. The party's cadres cleverly do not wear religious clothing, and instead promote anti-corruption policies.

The recent arrest of Al Amin Nasution of the United Development Party (PPP) -- which supported Agum Gumelar -- could be seen as evidence that the behavior of the New Order parties under the corrupt regime of Soeharto can still be found.

The Corruption Eradication Commission caught Al Amin red-handed for bribery at the Ritz Carlton Jakarta. Media reported the commission also nabbed a prostitute with the legislator.

The public still clearly remembers the Golkar legislator who was caught literally naked in a sex video with a dangdut singer last year. Yahya Zaini then resigned as a member of the House of Representatives.

The current media blow up on padlocked masseuses may also motivate voters to chose candidates espousing better morals: Heryawan and Dede.

If it was a soccer game, Danny (Golkar) and Agum (PDI) would be badly injured before entering the soccer field to face young and energized players. Their faces would be covered with s---t thrown by the spectators.

Many of the "floating masses" are those who were described in a book titled Who Speaks for Islam?, co-authored by John L. Esposito -- a growing number of Muslims who love democracy, reject violence but hate secularism. Muslims who love American food and blue jeans, but hate corrupt and hypocrite candidates, especially nominees from the two pillars of the New Order regime: Golkar and the military.

The West Java election will probably affect the presidential elections next year. Whoever the candidate supported by PKS is, he -- the party dislikes the idea of a female president -- would have more of a chance to win the race. And the president is expected to share his power with the party and acted as a devout Muslim.

Many more sharia-inspired bylaws would be approved by the regional councils and the much-opposed anti-pornography bill would be passed into law. The initiatives would not necessarily come from PKS cadres as many opportunist legislators, mostly from the Golkar party, support the bylaws, believing them to be a quick way to lure back voters.

In the future, more dangdut singers, not only Inul Daratista and Dewi Persik, could be banned because of their erotic dancing, and more masseuses could be padlocked. Again, it should not be blamed on PKS cadres.

The writer is a journalist at The Jakarta Post. He can be reached at junaidi@thejakartapost.com

Dumb and dangerous

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/04/11/editorial-dumb-and-dangerous.html

Editorial:

Fri, 04/11/2008 12:32 PM | Opinion

The first thought that came to mind when the government said it planned to block Internet sites that host the anti-Islam documentary Fitna was: What a dumb idea. Those who understand how the Internet works know full well that you cannot censor this medium, unlike television, radio and newspapers. You can block particular sites, but those who look hard enough can find Fitna, the hate documentary produced by a Dutch politician, elsewhere in the ever-expanding virtual world.

Sure enough, in the past few days, those trying to access YouTube from Indonesia found the site was no longer accessible.

YouTube, one of the most popular file-sharing communities on the Internet, hosts the film. The government gave it a few days notice in demanding the removal of the film from YouTube and other similar file-sharing sites. When this demand went largely ignored, Indonesia-based ISPs, at the behest of the government, started blocking access to YouTube and other sites on Wednesday.

Voila, the Indonesian government makes its first foray into censoring the Internet. What a futile effort. What it has done is not quite censoring, for Fitna can be still found on numerous other websites and blogs. Instead, the government has deprived Indonesians access to one of the world's most popular file-sharing communities. This is like the Indonesian expression, "to catch a rat, you burn down the entire rice barn. The rat escapes, and you are left with a razed barn".

YouTube, which is owned by Google, is one of the latest wonders of the Internet. It allows people around the globe to share videos of all kinds. Yes, there are the hate documentaries, far worse than Fitna, posted there.

But by and large, this file-sharing community does more good than harm. Indonesian artists seeking to penetrate the global film industry have a chance to break the mold through this medium. Talents that otherwise would have been ignored can now find space, and perhaps their big break, through YouTube.

Education, the dissemination of information and exchange of cultural products are just some of the areas that benefit tremendously from sites like YouTube.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono must have received some frighteningly dumb advice when he, at a press conference, demanded that YouTube remove Fitna from its site. There was no way YouTube would have complied, and besides, now that the site is blocked, people can still get hold of the film.

It is not clear who the President was trying to appease. The religious conservatives? They too are among the prime beneficiaries of YouTube. What the President has done is to alienate millions of Indonesians, particularly the young generation, who find file-sharing communities on the Internet not only useful but an indispensable part of their lives. If Barack Obama is appealing to the young Internet generation to vote in this year's presidential election in the United States, Yudhoyono seems to be doing exactly the opposite.

Those dumb advisers could not have been completely ignorant of the ineffectiveness of Internet censorship. The fact that they went ahead, and the President took their advice, sends a disturbing sign that they are not only dumb, but also dangerous. It shows a mindset that takes us a decade back to the era of censorship.

We see the signs in the present administration's efforts to restore some form of control over the media. The plan to review the 1999 Press Law, the latest draft of the Criminal Code that reinstates restrictions on freedom of expression and the new law on the cybermedia with its censorship clauses all point to an administration ever eager to give itself some control over what society reads, listens to and views.

Indonesia's commitment to freedom of expression and the right to information, both of which are guaranteed in the Constitution, are now being put in doubt. When Indonesia hosts the next Global Inter-Media Dialogue in Bali, President Yudhoyono will have to answer a lot of questions about his own personal commitment to guaranteeing freedom of expression in Indonesia.