Are you sick and tired of the shameful antics of our House of Representatives, as the Bank Century saga rolls on and on and on?
There’s the unruly and juvenile behavior of our elected representatives – throwing plastic bottles and calling people names, for heaven’s sake! Then there’s the grubby betrayal of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) by three members of his own coalition – the Golkar Party, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and the United Development Party (PPP).
And of course, there’s the disloyalty of business tycoon and Golkar Party chairman Aburizal Bakrie, SBY’s erstwhile ally and the former People’s welfare minister. He seems still stuck in Soeharto-era, old-style patronage politics. Mud sticks, they say.
Ah well, that’s politics for you – and men too, it seems.
So, let’s turn our sights on the fairer sex: women! After all, just two days ago we commemorated 100 years of International Women’s Day, and women always brighten things up, don’t they? Just look at Sri Mulyani Indrawati, our intrepid Finance Minister. Despite the onslaught of attacks from so many parties, she’s holding up, still composed, still steadfast and still strong.
Maybe that’s why SBY finally managed to bring himself to defend the Bank Century bailout, supporting Vice President Boediono and Sri Mulyani, at long last … even if he was three months late! Did he only just remember that these two are the stars in his Cabinet, the ones who kept the Indonesian economy afloat despite the financial crisis? When did he realize Sri Mulyani is one woman who he has no choice but to defend?
And what about all the other women in Indonesia? Looks like maybe he ain’t doing much to defend them, judging from the demos held on Monday at the Hotel Indonesian traffic circle, in front of the Presidential Palace and at the Supreme Court.
Hundreds gathered to demand that SBY’s administration take more responsibility for economic, industrial, land, labor and environmental policies that have resulted in the discrimination, exploitation and acts of violence against women.
Protestors included women and men from the National Commission on Equality (K2N); the Indonesian Confederation of Prosperous Workers’ Unions (KSBSI); the Indonesian People’s Opposition Front (FORI); the Indonesian Women’s Brigade (PBI); the Women’s Movement Caring about Youth; the Nation’s Hope (P3HB); and the CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women) work group on Indonesia.
And they had more to offer than just placards, shouting, and acronyms. They had grim statistics too. According to PBI, for example, every day 12 domestic migrant workers die in the countries where they are sent to work; 1,600 women workers are fired; 20 women are sold as sexual commodities through trafficking; 100 million women have to borrow Rp 30,000 (US$3.30) for daily household consumption needs; 12 women are victims of sexual violence; 48 mothers die giving birth; and one fisherwoman loses 42 hectares of fishponds due to reclamation of the shore for business development. And every four days a woman commits suicide due to economic pressure. Chilling figures, by any reckoning.
And I reckon SBY is defending one woman by the name of Sri Mulyani only because he needs her is to hang on to his shiny international reputation. But defending the average woman worker, farmer, fisherwoman, domestic worker (migrant or otherwise) or housewife? Are you kidding?
Don’t forget, SBY’s is the only post-Soeharto administration that has tolerated new laws that criminalize women who don’t follow an Islamic dress code.
In fact, I can think of 154 ways that the SBY government has allowed discrimination against women – that’s how many regional ordinances (Perdas) were produced across the country between 1999 and 2009 that discriminate against women. According to Kamala Chandrakirana, the former head of the National Commission on Violence against Women, some 64 new regional ordinances limit women’s freedom of expression, 21 regulate the way women dress, and 37 are said to be intended to eliminate prostitution, which is difficult to define, but is easily used to criminalize women.
And Aceh has its own qanun (its term for Perdas) on khalwat (being in close proximity with a member of the opposite sex who is not your spouse or immediate relative). It has also introduced caning, and even stoning to death for adultery, like in a medieval nightmare – all without SBY lifting a finger to stop them.
That’s why the demonstrators who came out on International Women’s Day last Monday were demanding that SBY now take responsibility for the fate of millions of Indonesian women. They say the government’s neoliberal policies are the root cause of the current critical state of women, children and other marginalized people.
What will happen to these vulnerable groups, they ask, when the government’s bright and shiny new China ASEAN Free Trade Area agreement actually starts being implemented. The mind boggles!
From the very beginning of the presidency in 2004, SBY has consistently pandered to the demands of political Islam for the sake of his coalition government. Just take the regional ordinances as an example. At the beginning of his second term in 2009, he promised to review the situation, but he still hasn’t – I suppose he was afraid of shaking up his coalition. Doesn’t seemed to have helped much, huh? He was backstabbed by the PKS regardless.
That’s why I think that if SBY thought the economy could survive sacrificing Sri Mulyani, he’d probably have dropped her long ago. And I suppose he thinks he can get away with sacrificing the average Indonesian woman, because she doesn’t relate directly to saving his neck.
But what about saving the nation’s neck? Sacrificing women and children, who make up more than 65 percent of the population, involves a lot more than risking one’s neck. The whole nation will go down the toilet.
So wake up, boys! International Women’s Day happens only once a year, but Indonesian Women’s Day is every day of the year!
The writer is author of
Julia’s Jihad.
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