Halal-eluia Bogor’s pork ban threatens democracy

Evi Mariani ,  JAKARTA   |  Fri, 07/10/2009 11:12 AM  |  Opinion

Mayor Diani Budiarto, wants his city, Bogor, to become a halal city. His policy to run Bogor according to Islamic rules includes removing pig-slaughtering equipment and building a slaughterhouse on the outskirts of the city in Bubulak subdistrict.  

“Our demand for pork is low anyway. And for other groups that need it, they can procure the facility themselves,” he told the press recently.

Besides his decision, what caught my attention was the way he built a wall between “us” and “them”.

“Our” demand for pork, he said. For “other” groups, he went on. It was immediately clear to me that for the mayor “us” equals those that not eat pork and “them” equals those that do.  

Who does not eat pork? Muslims and Jews and vegetarians, mostly. Who eats pork? Most Chinese Indonesians, Christians, Hindus and non-vegetarian Buddhists and many more. In the Indonesian context, the Jews are likely to be out of the picture, so what Mayor Diani’s has in mind about Bogor citizens, obviously, is Muslims, and as a by product, vegetarians (who would still see cows and goats and chickens slaughtered in Bogor anyway).

Diani might want to demonstrate that his decision was mostly based on practicality. Demand is low anyway, plus there is the H1N1 threat. But he did not kick chickens out of the city when bird flu was a concern, and the threat of H5N1 infection from fowl to humans is higher than H1N1 infection from pigs to humans.

But, no, I’m not going to buy his practicality excuse. I believe this is political, as it is exclusionary and discriminatory. And pork eaters in Bogor, for one, are of course justified in their indignation over the decision. Not only will they find  that pork is getting scarcer, they will also feel a sense of exclusion as a result of the pork ban, and the halal city concept in the first place.

Mayor Diani’s seemingly trivial decision has become a trend in many regions and, I argue, is one of the serious threats to Indonesia’s democracy. Democracy upholds a number of values, and one of them is equality. Every citizen in this democratic country is equal before the law and before the state.

If a taxpaying meatball (beef) seller in Bogor gets the facility and ease (from the Bogor administration) to get his or her beef, why should a taxpaying honey-sauced paikut (pork) seller in Bogor go an extra mile to get the meat he or she needs?  

In a similar vein, Tangerang Mayor Wahidin Halim also poses a threat to this republic’s democracy with his Tangerang Akhklaqul Karimah city proposal. Akhlaqul Karimah is an Arabic term meaning high morality. What he did was more subtle. Could he really guarantee equality in policy making when he proposed the akhklaqul kharimah motto?

Did he really give equal attention to the opinion of non-Muslim public officials in Tangerang when he employed the concept? Does he really expect a Hindu official to promote the concept when the words are foreign to the official’s tongue? And seriously, how can a non-Muslim Indonesian who has been living in Tangerang municipality longer than Wahidin feel a sense of belonging to a city with a motto he or she cannot pronounce correctly?

That is only Bogor and Tangerang. Mentioning the discriminative practises of the Depok administration would make this article even longer.

Nowadays, it is even more confusing for minorities when such leaders are not necessarily from Islamic-based parties. When he ran for 2008-2013 term, Diani Budiarto was indeed backed by the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), but also by the nationalist Golkar party and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). Wahidin Halim, when he ran in 2008, was backed by Golkar, the Democratic Party and the PDI-P, among others. The PKS, the one party that was often accused of having a sharia law implementation agenda, backed another pair in the Tangerang election at that time.

In the vice presidential debate last week, candidate Wiranto, backed by his own party the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura) and Jusuf Kalla’s Golkar, were the only presidential pair to insist that religion and political practice could work side-by-side and produce good results for Indonesia. On the other hand,  Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s and Boediono, backed by among others the PKS, said religion should be above political practice.

A voter who wants to see democracy and pluralism upheld, cannot simply avoid Islamic-based parties to choose a non-sectarian leader. Politicians from Golkar, the Democratic Party and the PDI-P, could swing to the right or to the left without a care for their parties’ principles.

What to do then? Fight for the rights. History shows that those in power always try to exclude some groups that are different from them. Indonesia’s history also shows stories of struggles for equal citizenship. Our history of independence is one of the struggle for equal rights.  

The political pendulum is now swinging to a certain direction. Non-Muslims are increasingly excluded by discriminative bylaws and government decisions. Government institutions, the ones that should sponsor equal citizenship for every Indonesian, are increasingly excluding certain groups.  

Minority leaders and members of the majority who love democracy and think that pluralism is our country’s asset, please don’t sit back. Let’s do something. I want to continue to feel proud of being a citizen of the world’s most populous Muslim country with a working democracy.

The author is a staff writer at The Jakarta Post.

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