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Ball in Jokowi’s court on ITE Law revisions
The House of Representatives is set to amend the controversial Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law this year.
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Activists stage a rally in front of the Presidential Palace in Jakarta on Tuesday, demanding the government abolish the Electronic Information and Transactions Law after an anticorruption activist in Blitar, East Java, was named a suspect of defamation for writing a Facebook post accusing a regent of corruption. (The Jakarta Post/Seto Wardhana)
T
he House of Representatives is set to amend the controversial Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law this year, but the initiative should come from the government, lawmakers say.
The House says it can include proposed revisions to the ITE Law in the 2021 National Legislation Program (Prolegnas) priority list, which it failed to pass earlier this month because of disagreement over the proposal to revise the 2017 Elections Law. It is set to deliberate the Prolegnas again in the next sitting session, which will commence on March 8.
“If the government is serious about [its intention to revise the law] in 2021, it still has a chance for it because this year’s Prolegnas priority list has not yet been passed,” Gerindra Party lawmaker Desmond Junaidi Mahesa told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
Calls for revisions to the controversial cyberlaw gained traction after President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo publicly ordered the National Police to be more “selective” in handling online defamation cases and called for the amendments of problematic articles within the ITE Law.
The President made the instruction following public outcry over his perceived tone-deaf remark when asking the public to “strongly criticize” the government, given that the nation’s civic space has shrunk under his watch, with hundreds of people jailed for simply expressing their opinions online — especially those critical of the government.
One of the most scathing responses came from his own former vice president, Jusuf Kalla.
“People want to see how we can criticize the government without being summoned by the police as Pak Kwik or anyone else has complained about,” he said, referring to former coordinating economic minister and outspoken government critic Kwik Kian Gie.
