Marriage tax outrageous

Marriage tax outrageous

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.