Daft law on marriage unfair to foreigners

Dian Sasmita Bogor

Four years ago, Gadjah Mada University economist Revrisond Baswier surprised the public with a proposal that the Ministry of Finance slap a heavy tax on marriages involving celebrities in Indonesia in order to discourage them from seeking divorce too easily.

The high divorce rate among celebrities in Indonesia motivated him to make the proposal, but it was taken as a joke rather than a serious proposition by a permissive public for whom marriage has lost its sacred meaning.

Now, the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) are to forward a draft bill to parliament aiming to prevent Indonesian Muslim women from being divorced too easily by foreigners.

If passed into law, it would prevent foreigners from marrying Indonesian Muslim women unless they put up what looks like "collateral" of Rp 500 million, so that if their husbands ever divorce the woman they would "win" that amount of money to live on.

Many observers have difficulty understanding the motivation behind this draft bill, and indeed there are many questions to be asked regarding this particular legislative endeavor.

First, if a foreigner pays Rp 500 million to a woman he divorces, what about those millions of Indonesian men who have divorced their wives? Will there be a law regulating them to provide the same amount to their former wives?

In other words, if it is a matter of providing some kind of financial security to Indonesian divorcees, why do we require only foreign men to take such a degree of responsibility, while ignoring the fact that there are a far greater number of Indonesians who have divorced their wives?

Second, setting that kind of "price tag" suggests that we are selling our women to foreigners as if they were commodities in need of foreign buyers. The collateral to be paid before tying the knot would turn marriage into a business contract rather than a holy institution. And nobody believes that a foreign man in his right mind would waste half a billion rupiah on a contract of this kind.

Third, if the real aim is to provide financial security to divorced women, why start with women who marry foreigners? This category of women are mainly from the middle- and upper-classes including celebrities who do not desperately need financial support.

Divorced women who do desperately need financial security are from the lower economic classes, some of whom have been forced into prostitution to support themselves. They have been neglected, but the (Indonesian) men who divorced them are not being required to pay huge sums of money like that being required of foreigners in this new draft bill!

Fourth, if it is a law, then it must apply to all citizens and residents alike and must not apply only to believers of a certain religion. But even so, why has the draft bill originated from the MUI and not the Indonesian Inter-Religious Dialog Forum?

Also, what about Indonesian women who marry foreigners abroad and bring them home? Likewise, would this attempt not encourage Indonesian women and foreign men to get married abroad instead of at home? And again, would this law apply retroactively -- for the sake of fairness?

There are so many more questions of this kind, and it is unbelievable that the government is even contemplating getting parliamentary approval for such a daft proposal.

But let's approach this with a cool head and without pretense. The real remedy is not the draft bill nor any other strange law. You can never prevent divorces using laws because it is also part of human rights, namely the right of self determination and privacy.

What religious leaders should do is not to go to the legislature but rather return to their respective communities and promote moral standards. Why? Because divorces only happen to people who were not supposed to have got married in the first place.

If it is too easy to get a religious seal on a marriage, then it will be just as easy for people to get a divorce.

A greater disaster could emerge from the nation's inability to curtail pornography than from this narrow domain of celebrities marrying or divorcing foreign husbands.

Why not take real action now to curb the spread of pornography -- if that is what we aim to achieve -- rather than wasting energy bickering over couples getting married or divorced?

And if it is true that the government really cares about divorcees, why not start by giving jobs to the countless number of hopeless women being employed against their will at so many places of ill-repute across the country?

The writer is manager of Avicam Entertainment, Bogor, West Java, and can be reached at nanasmita@yahoo.com.