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he Home Ministry has revoked almost 1,900 bylaws introduced in regencies and provinces across the nation over the past 10 years because they had loopholes that could lead to serious problems. Activists, however, criticized the ministry for failing to revoke bylaws that are discriminatory against women.

Home Ministry legal chief Zudan Arif Fakrulloh confirmed on Friday the government had annulled 1,878 bylaws since 2002 and was reviewing hundreds of others including those on alcoholic beverages, local taxes and levies, and spatial planning.

However, the government has yet to amend or revoke any bylaws that discriminate against women, which, according to rights activists and experts, reflects the government’s lack of interest in promoting and protecting the rights of Indonesian women.

Rights activist Siti Musdah Mulia of the Indonesian Conference of Religions and Peace, for example, said that none of the bylaws revoked by the ministry included any of the existing bylaws that infringed women’s rights, citing a bylaw banning women from wearing tight pants in Aceh.

“Local administrators as well as those in the central government think that all regulations that govern women’s bodies and lives are essential, thus they are reluctant to do anything about them. To me this shows the government’s lack of commitment to promoting women’s rights at local and national levels,” she said.

She further condemned local administrations in particular for abusing sharia to legitimize their “ill-motivated” interest in governing the lives of Muslim women.

Musdah Mulia also cited the plan by the Lhokseumawe administration in Aceh to enact a bylaw banning women from straddling motorbikes, saying it showed how patriarchal administrators often manipulated women to secure their positions.

“This is a false perspective. Local administrations must focus on empowering the people by widening access to public facilities if they really want to uphold sharia. Because sharia is all about bringing prosperity to the people,” she said.

Contacted separately, Indonesian Institute of Sciences’ (LIPI) analyst Siti Zuhro urged the central government to not only ensure that all local administrations fulfilled standards when issuing regulations, by providing comprehensive academic papers for example, but also to closely monitor such administrations in deliberating as well as enacting any such regulations.

“The poor quality of local administrators is among the problems behind biased regulations issued in regions. Our research, for example, has found that many existing bylaws lack academic papers. This is why we often find that some regions deliberately copy bylaws from other parts of the country without adjusting the content to their local situations,” Zuhro said.

In addition, the Home Ministry’s Zudan said the government and lawmakers were deliberating a draft revision to Law No. 32/2004 on local administrations that would, among other things, require all local administrations to forward all existing bylaws to the ministry, otherwise they would be considered illegal.

“We are aiming to finish the deliberation of the law by March this year at the latest so we can immediately implement it. Therefore, it will be easier for us to document all existing bylaws in this country and review them for content that might violate human rights,” Zudan said.

He added that all local administrations should then abide by the new revised law otherwise they would suffer punishment from the central government that might range from official warnings to replacement.