Robertus Wardi – The government plans to allow people who do not identify with any of the six official religions to leave the religion column on their identity cards blank, the Home Affairs Ministry says.
The change is meant to put the country's pluralistic founding principles into practice by offering a solution for people who have often felt marginalized by government policy due to their minority religious affiliations.
"Believers in local religions, for instance, don't have to fill out the religion column on their identity cards if they don't want to. Just leave it empty," Home Affairs Minister Gamawan Fauzi said after opening a meeting on electronic identity cards, or e-KTP, in Jakarta on Monday.
Gamawan said he would invite related officials, including Minister of Religious Affairs Suryadharma Ali, to finalize the proposal. The plan, however, will be discussed further with the Ministry of Religious Affairs before being floated to the public.
It is a move that will likely create controversy as militant religious groups mushroom across the archipelago.
The Constitution guarantees Indonesians freedom of religion. However, the government only recognizes six official religions: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism.
The existing law requires that every Indonesian citizen hold an identity card identifying them as one of these six religions. The country also does not recognize agnosticism or atheism.
The government's program to issue an e-KTP to all citizens has been dogged by problems since it was first scheduled to begin in August last year. Delays in getting fingerprinting and retinal scanners to urban ward offices in 197 initial districts and municipalities delayed the launch by several weeks.
The deadline to register all residents of the capital for the cards within the first 100 days of the launch came and went, forcing the Jakarta administration to request a deadline extension to April this year.
Other districts and cities, which had been given until the end of 2011 to register their residents, also had their deadline extended to April.
Gamawan, meanwhile, has delayed the deadline once more. "The old IDs can only be used up to Dec. 31," the minister said. "All citizens must use the e-KTP by January 1, 2013."