M. Taufiqurrahman, Jakarta – Calls for the central government to scrap sharia-inspired ordinances adopted in many of the nation's regencies and cities have received a cautious response from top officials.
Home Minister Muhammad Ma'ruf said Wednesday he would first let the country's 33 governors decide whether the bylaws contradicted the Constitution or higher laws.
"We have decided governors should be given a greater role in identifying unwieldy bylaws and they should bring them to us for further discussion," Ma'ruf said after a hearing with the House of Representatives Commission II on home affairs.
Ma'ruf promised every bylaw judged unconstitutional or in violation of the five basic principles of the state Pancasila ideology would be revoked.
The 2004 Regional Government Law gives the Home Ministry the authority to scrap any local regulations judged to be in violation of provincial or state laws. The law also gives the ministry the authority to prevent local governments from passing laws it judges problematic.
People who wish to challenge the validity of local ordinances, meanwhile, can take them to the Supreme Court for a judicial review.
On Tuesday, 56 House legislators presented a petition to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono calling on him to nullify the numerous sharia-inspired bylaws passed in the country.
Twenty-two regencies and municipalities in the country have implemented sharia-inspired bylaws following the implementation of regional autonomy.
The bylaws have criminalized conduct prohibited in Islamic teachings – punishing people for adultery, alcohol consumption and gambling, and women for staying out late at night without a male escort.
The call to scrap sharia-inspired bylaws is being supported by several Muslim intellectuals.
Muslim scholar Muhammad Syafii Ma'arif said the government should not hesitate to revoke religiously motivated ordinances. "The implementation of such regulations will only create divisions in society," Syafii said.
The former Muhammadiyah chairman believed drawing up sharia-inspired laws was futile. "Local governments will have problems putting them into action. And past experiences have shown us that the bureaucracy has no discipline enforcing them," he said.
Separately, Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Widodo Adisucipto said Wednesday the government planned to review all the nation's problematic bylaws. Widodo was quoted by Antara as saying that more than 85 percent of local ordinances were rife with inconsistencies.
"Since the start of the reform era, the quality of most bylaws has got worse," he said during a meeting of the Consultative Group on Indonesia. Widodo said many local ordinances were stifling investment in the country.