http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3123&Itemid=175
Indonesian Lawmaker Crashes Over Porn Download
Written by Our Correspondent
Monday, 11 April 2011
Downloading the videoAn Islamist party sees one of its own caught being naughty
on line
Indonesia has no shortage of self-appointed guardians of morality, men like
Tifatul Sembiring, the minister of communication and information technology who
has been a vigorous proponent of the harshly restrictive 2008 anti-pornography
law.
So when a lawmaker and member of the rigid Islam-based Properous Justice Party
(PKS) that Tifatul used to chair was photographed Friday in the chambers of the
House of Representatives downloading and viewing pornography on his tablet
computer, the action elicited howls of laughter, outrage and scorn nationwide.
The case underscores an ongoing cultural war here between hardliners who want
to impose their vision of morality on Indonesia and the nation's pervasive
ethic of pluralism and tolerance. Score this one for the live-and-let-live
camp.
Online commentators, twitter feeds and chat rooms exploded, comparing the case
of Arifinto, a little-known PKS lawmaker, and his tablet with the high-profile
prosecution earlier this year of pop star Nazril "Ariel" Irham, who was
sentenced to three and a half years in prison after private sex tapes
circulated featuring him having sex with two of his girlfriends.
Ariel was not convicted of distributing the material but only of making it
possible for someone else to distribute it by keeping the video on his laptop
computer. A technician found the videos of the singer and two well-known local
celebrity actresses and posted them on the Internet.
Arifinto resigned Monday under pressure from his party, which became a laughing
stock over his faux pas. "On my own will, without any pressure from anyone, for
the sake of myself and the party's honor, I will soon tender my resignation
from the House of Representatives," Arifinto told a televised press conference.
It is unclear if Arifinto will find himself the target of legal action.
"I apologize to the Prosperous Justice Party, the cadres and to everyone at the
House of Representatives. I will keep dedicating myself to my party," he said,
promising to study the Koran and seek enlightenment from clerics in the
aftermath of his downfall.
Arifinto initially tried to defend himself when a newspaper photographer posted
pictures of him downloading the porn images at a House session, saying they
were attachments to an email, which he promptly deleted.
The photographer, Mohamad Irfan from Media Indonesia newspaper, quickly stepped
forward with more images and told interviewers the lawmaker was surfing at
length through a menu of images before he found what he was looking for. He
simply had not reckoned on a camera with a telephoto lens being able to see the
action from the press gallery.
I can explain everything
The party quickly said it would censure the lawmaker, adding over the weekend
that it would investigate all gadgets owned by its politicians to guard against
any further prurient material lurking inside party-approved computers.
Arifinto was a founder of PKS, which has its roots in a semi-underground
university-based Islamic movement that began during the Suharto era when the
former dictator banned religion-based politics. Since independence in 1945,
fundamentalist groups have often sought to turn Indonesia into an official
Islamic state, a goal the PKS supports.
Instead, the country enshrined pluralism into its constitution through the
doctrine of Pancisila, which recognizes Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and
Confucianism as valid religions alongside Islam. The 2008 anti-pornography law
was widely seen as a victory for Islamists bent on turning the nation into a
religious state.
While Islamist parties have seen their share of the national vote gradually
diminish since the end of the Suharto era allowed them to flourish openly, PKS
remains a member of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's ruling coalition,
albeit on increasingly shaky ground. It has been rumored for months that PKS
could see its four cabinet seats halved or eliminated altogether in a looming
cabinet reshuffle.
PKS has consistently broken with the administration on a number of issues,
including a vitriolic and partisan House investigation last year into a 2008
bank bailout that eventually forced respected Finance Minister Sri Mulyani
Indrawati out of office. She is now a Managing Director of the World Bank and
is widely believed to be a possible candidate for president in 2014.
Communications Minister Tifatul has been a particular embarrassment. He has
openly discussed going to war with Malaysia over cultural slights, said natural
disasters were a punishment from God and joked about people with AIDs. After
saying he would never shake hands with a woman who was not his wife, he was
photographed grinning as he shook hands with US First Lady Michelle Obama
during a state visit here earlier this year. His excuse was that she "forced"
her hands onto his.
But while it is easy to dismiss Tifatul and now the porn-viewing ex-lawmaker as
laughable figures, PKS and its allies have also given political cover to
Islamist thugs like the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), which has led attacks on
Christian churches, been implicated in violence against the minority Ahmadiyah
Islamic sect and used vigilantes in various parts of the country to try and
enforce "Islamic values."
According to a recent report on al-Jazeera, Islamist elements in the Indonesian
military have been plotting to topple Yudhoyono using unrest spurred by the FPI
and others, a possibility confirmed by political sources. Although not
specifically linked to PKS, the supposed "plot" includes figures linked to PKS
allies. The allegations, which include the names of individuals approached to
serve in a "revolutionary" cabinet, have been allowed to die down with no
action taken.
Yudhoyono has been widely criticized for his failure to rein in the PKS and its
allies. In recent weeks, he has excluded PKS from political negotiations over
the structure of his ruling coalition, however, a move political observers say
was prompted by the PKS supporting quiet discussions in the House about a
possible move to try and impeach the president as a way of embarrassing the
current government.
For civil libertarians, it is enough this week to see the party that drafted
the 2008 porn law, which could even make two-piece swimsuits and kissing on
television illegal, brought low by the sight of one of its own gazing at his
x-rated tablet in the same chamber where that law was debated and passed.
"The government must be more serious in overcoming pornography," the PKS-linked
magazine Sabili wrote earlier this year. "Pornography is dangerous primarily
because it uses the media. Information and communications technology and is
growing rapidly making pornographic content easily and cheaply available."
Just how available - and how personally dangerous - a member of the magazine's
advisory board, former Representative Arifinto, found out to his discomfort.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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