Govt reviews discriminative rulings; Official

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government is currently reviewing around 50 regulations deemed discriminative against ethnic and religious minorities in the country, Cabinet deputy secretary Erman Rajagukguk said here on Wednesday.

He said his office had listed various discriminative rulings and had asked the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights to draft changes to the regulations.

However, the review has not been given top priority in the nation's much-needed legal reforms, Erman said.

"The people should be patient because there are a lot of drafts and other regulations that need prioritizing by the ministry, and we have not set a dateline for the review," he told The Jakarta Post.

He said the government had given priority to enacting or amending certain regulations recommended by international donor countries to support the country's stalled economic recovery.

After the downfall of Soeharto from power in 1998, several non-governmental organizations and legal experts had pushed for the revocation of many regulations justifying discriminatory treatment against ethnic Chinese citizens.

The Chinese-Indonesian Association (INTI) said it had submitted a formal request to then-president Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid last year for the revocation or amendment of rulings that were included in presidential and ministerial decrees, and state circulars.

Such discriminative regulations are also contained in legislative decrees, several articles in the 1945 Constitution and other regulations adopted during the Dutch colonial era and the Soeharto regime.

Most of the regulations were enacted to prevent a revival of communism and other leftist ideas after the 1966 abortive coup blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party.

Gus Dur had promised to revoke rules that limited the use of the Chinese language and curbed the spread of Kong Hu Chu beliefs in the predominantly Muslim country, but his government failed to do so.

In certain cases, a president can revoke any regulations he deems unfair that were issued by previous governments.

Such a move was taken by former president BJ Habibie when he scrapped a presidential decree issued by Soeharto that required businessmen to donate to the latter's charitable foundations.

However, Erman said that in revoking the discriminative regulations, the government needed not only a political decision by the president, but also a comprehensive judicial review.

"If a ruling is related only to a person, then the president has the prerogative to revoke it immediately. But because these regulations involve the administrative process, so it (the revocation) requires a complete judicial review," he said without elaborating.