Ina Parlina – While many citizens are enjoying new freedoms, minorities are still persecuted.
The court's past rulings present a mixed picture of how much minorities can hope for from the legal system. Beleaguered religious minorities still face bleak prospects, as the court upheld the Blasphemy Law.
The 1965 law has been used to justify policies favoring the mainstream schools of the nation's five recognized faiths: Balinese Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism and Islam.
Early indications of the views of several recently inaugurated justices may be bellwethers for future rulings touching on minorities.
Arief Hidayat, a new justice and law professor from Diponegoro University in Semarang, Central Java, for example, said that atheism and same-sex marriage should be prohibited in Indonesia for contradicting the state ideology of Pancasila and the Constitution.
Arief made his comments during his "fit-and-proper" test before lawmakers at the House of Representatives.
He also said that Indonesia should implement human rights appropriate to the "local context", instead of unconditionally adopting the standards of the United Nations.
The fact that Arief was selected reflects how his views have resonated with people, despite worrying and confusing others, particularly as Indonesia has ratified many international conventions on human rights.
Arief's controversial views on atheism, however, were not extraordinary for Indonesia. A court in West Sumatra, a Muslim-majority province noted for its piety, sentenced Alexander Aan to two-and-a-half years imprisonment for violating the 2008 law on cyber crimes by "inciting animosity and hatred" through a Facebook posting that proclaimed that he was an atheist.
Meanwhile, Arief's views on homosexuals prompted an openly gay citizen, Hartoyo, to write the justice an open letter quoting on the Constitution's provisions for freedom from discrimination. Hartoyo said that he and his partner had been tortured in his hometown in Aceh, the only province allowed to issue bylaws based on sharia.
Other observers have lauded Justice Maria Farida Indrati for her pluralist views, for instance, in dissenting to the nation's controversial Pornography Law, which she said would be prone to misinterpretation.
Maria was also praised for her dissenting opinion on the annulment of election laws requiring that parties nominate more women candidates. The justice said that the quota for women would be balanced by appointing election winners based on votes received, while the majority ruled otherwise.
Maria also dissented against a ruling that upheld the Blasphemy Law, saying the state should not intervene in matters of faith.
Such dissenting opinions have at least given a voice to minority perspectives.
Women in informal marriages have also gained hope for their children through a landmark ruling issued in February 2012 that gave civil rights to children born out of wedlock whose biological fathers could be identified. The decision resulted from a judicial review request filed by dangdut singer Machica Muchtar, who claimed that the father of her son was the late Moerdiono, a former aide of president Soeharto.
The ruling was praised by the National Child Protection Commission (KPAI), which has said that an estimated 50 percent of children do not have birth certificates, principally due to unregistered marriages. The Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) disagreed with the ruling, which it said might be construed as an endorsement of adultery.
Although the nation's jurists must have pluralist views to ensure that Constitutional rights are preserved in a diverse nation, according to Wahyudi Djafar of the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (Elsam), the pluralist views of the court have often been questioned.
Justice Ahmad Fadlil Sumadi said that the challenge was "how to place the law into the context of a living constitution", requiring its guardians on the court to use their wisdom in the face of changing times.