Govt reviews discriminative rulings; Official
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.