A quick overview of the contentious provisions within the latest draft revision to the legislation, a direct legacy of colonialism, shows that the bill appears to be no less colonial than the legal vestiges of the Dutch colonizers it wishes to dismantle.

The draft bill categorically criminalizes insults against the president, the vice president and the government. These provisions — stipulated under Articles 218, 219, 240 and 241 — are simply anachronistic in post-authoritarian, democratic Indonesia, more than 100 years after the colonial Wetboek van Strafrecht came into force in 1918.

It is not that we do not respect our leaders. We do not really care if it is the president of Indonesia or the governor-general of the Netherlands East Indies. Such provisions are just way too “rubbery” to enforce and thus could easily be used to repress legitimate criticism.

The government may have inserted new articles to make the clauses less draconian by excluding insults that are made in the “public interest” or in “self-defense”. But these legal caveats hardly make them in any way less rubbery or harsh — seriously, who can prove if one’s insults are more than just a petty attempt to hurt the president’s feelings?

As if retaining the colonial provisions on defaming politicians were not bad enough, the bill also criminalizes any extra-marital sexual relationship, raising concerns of a potentially brutal encroachment on privacy by the state or non-state “moral” apparatus.   

I am not saying the colonial criminal law was better. The Wetboek van Strafrecht was a terrible piece of legislation that was discriminatory against non-Europeans, particularly the native population, who were at the bottom of a blatantly racist social order.