One bad article in the newly passed Civil Registration Law spoils the whole legislation. The article, requiring citizens to provide their religion on legal documents, will worsen the discrimination faced by minority groups in the country.

Lawmakers, particularly those from Islamic-oriented parties in the House of Representatives, seem to have forgotten past incidents of interreligious violence. Often, such violence saw groups of people from one religious group conduct illegal identification card checks, looking for people from a different religion. Once found, these unfortunate people were often beaten black and blue, or worse.

Identification cards that specify the religion of the holder are of no use to the public. Such religious identification also runs counter to the Constitution, especially Article 28 (e), which guarantees freedom of worship and religion.

Requiring citizens officially to identify with one of the six religions recognized by the state – Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism – amounts to a violation of human rights and of the Constitution, which recognizes non-denominational beliefs.

This discriminatory article in the law is the result of a war of minds between secular factions in the House and minority groups on one side, and Islamic-oriented House actions on the other.

Unlike the tug-of-war over the national education bill, the secular groups were unable to muster much pressure during the deliberation of the civil registration bill. They called a series of press conferences and held some small street demonstrations, but were unable to apply the necessary pressure to influence the lawmakers, let alone the public.

The secular Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and Christian Prosperous Peace Party (PDS) put up a final stand last Friday, as the House was about to pass the bill. Their opposition resulted in an offer from the Islamic-oriented factions to all couples of non-denominational faiths whose marriages were not registered by the state to register within six months of the passage of the law.

It was the second win in a row for the Islamic factions on religious issues, after pushing through a national education bill which requires schools to provide students with religious teaching according to their faiths.

To be fair to the lawmakers, outside the one discriminatory article, the Civil Registration Law is a breakthrough. It is meant to initiate a reform of the country's civil registration system.

The law, for example, envisages a system where all citizens will have a single identification number (SIN) within the next five years. When the system is up and running, we expect, or rather hope, that there will no longer be people with more than one identification card, or alternatively people without an ID at all.

There are currently many people with more than one identification number – mostly for unholy purposes such as hiding their real identity to commit crimes, such as financial fraud or even terrorist attacks, or to avoid taxes or take more than one wife. Meanwhile, many uneducated and poor citizens have no identification card at all, excluding them from the formal sector and blocking them from government services meant for the poor.

Adopting a single identification number system would solve many problems currently faced by government agencies, law enforcers and businesses. Banks, for example, are often the victims of fraud by criminals using fake identification cards.

We are happy to learn that the Home Ministry has established the Directorate General for Civil Registration, and the German government's aid agency, the GTZ, has committed Rp 500 billion to help the ministry get the directorate up and running.

We also note that the new law makes civil registration a basic right of every citizen. This entails a responsibility on the part of the government to register all important events affecting the status of every citizen, including births, marriages, divorces and deaths. It also means that registration of these events should be free for all citizens.

Overall, the new law will benefit many people. But to make the law work better, we encourage those affected by the discriminatory article to file a judicial review with the Constitutional Court. Considering the record of the court, we are confident it will grant their motion and strike down the offending article.