Big Brother, once again

It takes a good ear and good counsel, as well as a degree of intelligence and conscience, for a leader to weigh all sorts of proposals, with coaxing and cajoling from all sides, and arrive at the best possible decision.

What kind of counsel President Susilo Bambang Yudhyono is now getting over proposed amendments to the Criminal Code from his ministers is not entirely clear. But a draft proposal exposed to the public not long ago indicates that the President may be in urgent need of a spin doctor in order to avert a dramatic and sudden slump in his public support.

As the world commemorates Press Freedom Day each May 3, we are reminded that no less than freedom of expression and thought are at stake the minute President Susilo signs his approval to the government draft of the new Criminal Code. Barely seven years after strongman Soeharto was pushed out of power, we are again witnessing crude attempts by those in power to monopolize what is considered politically and morally correct behavior and thought, on the pretext that it is for the good of over 200 million Indonesians, and that it is based on the profound wisdom of an elite circle of men and women.

Among others, an article in the draft states that promoting "principles of communism" will be subject to a maximum penalty of 10 years jail, unless you can prove you had no intention "of changing or replacing the state ideology Pancasila."

Then there's the clause on revealing in public any "sensual" parts of the body -- with the judge apparently free to determine whether a bare back or a naked navel would fall into such as category, before sentencing an offender to ten years behind bars with a Rp 300 million (almost US$ 32,000) fine. Judges would also determine whether dangdut performers and millions of their ecstatic fans will fill the jails, mixing with rapists, murderers and white-collar criminals for the heinous crime of "dancing erotically" in public.

In contrast to his support for media freedom, which has been expressed on more than one occasion, President Susilo is now on the brink of becoming the enemy of the free media if he signs the draft that contains a clause that will punish "any person found to have disseminated uncertain, exaggerated or incomplete news that could cause social disorder." In total, 49 clauses have been found in the draft that threaten media freedom. Those who devised such clauses may like to claim that it stemmed in part from clumsy reporting on communal conflicts a few years ago; but such issues are already covered in the Media Law, which media advocates are still seeking to improve.

In the 20 years that we have been trying to revise the criminal law inherited from the Dutch, the honor of issuing such a controversial amendment together with the legislature may ironically fall on Indonesia's first ever directly elected president. The voters' act of placing their trust in Susilo will hopefully lead him be much more questioning about the reason behind the revision to the Criminal Code. Human rights and civil liberties protection was supposed to be one of the primary reasons for this revision. Or so we thought. But it seems that parts of our colonial legal heritage suits certain of today's power brokers, as we still find in the draft a ban on "mock(ing) state authorities and institutions that may result in social chaos."

Indeed there is now the highly important state recognition of domestic violence as a crime, with more comprehensive protection of children from abuse in the proposed amendment. But failing to differentiate crimes involving minors and "crimes" of offending prim sensitivities, such as exhibiting a sculpture of a nude man or woman as the draft implies, further shows a twisted, dim sense of priorities among the President's advisors, including eminent professors of law, who drew up this draft.

A presidential approval of the draft would show our leader's confusion in accommodating concerns of "moral decadence" of vocal groups waving moralistic and religious flags, along with others yearning for "the good old days" when the media was easier to control. A presidential approval would constitute a return to the bad old days and to the inclinations of the old regime that Susilo should be distancing himself from; the old regime that assured us that Big Brother always knows best, even as we suffocated.