Porn Bill: Back From the Dead

If you're an Indonesian political party, how do you woo "muslim" voters to pick your party in next year's election? To some factions in the DPR (Indonesia's lower house), the answer is wickedly simple: you revive a controversial law that will ban whatever things deemed pornographic by those lawmakers. It was gloriously struck down about three or four years ago, after being the subject of many heated debates. As far as the "debate" went, it was more like a one-sided debate since the pro-side basically just made pointless show-of-force rallies without any real argument. The discussion went on and on for so long...

...and somehow, deliberations were finally stopped and the law was left to rot. Or so we thought.

Earlier this month, the media caught our honorable lawmakers rekindling their lost love. It is now renamed as Pornography Bill, dropping the infamous pornoaction part which is actually a made-up word by the former committee. (Who's had the stupidity to coin that word? What a dumb joke, and I'm laughing.) It is supported by all but two factions, giving it an easy pass if the House is (dys)functional enough to do so. The pair of factions opposing the bill are PDI-P (Indonesian Democratic Party - Struggle) and PDS (Prosperous Peace Party) with 122 seats combined out of 550. They have shown a firm stance against anything that might compromise the identity of our great nation and its Bhinneka Tunggal Ika. In the process, they also defended the people's rights to freedom of expression and the freedom to choose.

On the other hand, the supporting factions want to haste the deliberation of the bill and make it into a law as soon as possible. This group includes ruling Golkar and Demokrat parties, and an array of other parties: PAN, PKB, PPP, PPP, PBR, and of course, PKS. Surprise, surprise...not. The latter wants the law so badly that they're pushing for its endorsement before Lebaran as a "Ramadan present". It's so "sweet", your tummy will hurt. Other than revealing that PKS is a lousy present-giver, this law shows what these parties are craving: votes from Indonesia's muslim majority in the 2009 elections. If not for that, why would Golkar, which boasts itself as a centrist-nationalist party, pitch in on this laughable bill?

They are trying to fool people into believing that this bill is about saving the moral of Indonesians, claimed to be ruined by porn, among other things. "Thou shalt accept porn bill, for it is salvation...and millions of precious votes." People are made to think that this bill will develop religious (i.e. Islamic) values in the society by banning anything related to sexualism. Thus, the good-for-nothing MUI (Indonesian Council of Ulama) happily threw their weight behind this bill.

I believe that you are smarter than that. The unclear definition of pornography in the bill is very prone to be abused. Seriously, I'd like to ask how can those lawmakers believe that they can fairly define what pornography is. Besides, the conservative nature of Islamist parties in the House will certainly take things to even worse direction. In fact, the law is more likely to hurt whom it should protect. A law should be made as carefully as possible, since it will be applied to all parts of the country and it will affect people's lives. We must not take any risk by enacting a law with such vagueness. Last but not least, this law is blatantly based on Islamic law which should be applied, as a religious obligation, only personally. This proud nation stands firmly on its core principles of Pancasila and no one is allowed take that away from us.