The week in review: Fasting
amid price rises
Hundreds of millions of Muslims began the annual fasting month earlier this week requiring them to refrain from consuming food and beverages from dawn until sunset.
The small disagreement over when the lunar-based fasting month begins — members of Islamic organization Muhammadiyah started fasting on Tuesday, one day earlier than the beginning of Ramadhan as declared by the government and most other Islamic organizations — will not mar the virtues of the holy month.
However, unlike last year, this year’s fasting month will surely be much harder for the majority of Muslims because of the unusually high increases in the prices of most basic commodities and services as the impact of the recent fuel-price rise takes its toll.
Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population, usually sees prices rise immediately prior to and during Ramadhan and Idul Fitri but the recent fuel-price increase has pushed the inflationary pressures much further.
While the fasting month requires Muslims to refrain from indulgence in bodily desires, the government appealed to suppliers and retailers not to excessively raise prices to offset the costlier fuel so as not to increase the burdens on the people during the fasting month and upcoming Idul Fitri celebrations.
Meanwhile, State Intelligence Agency (BIN) chief Marciano Norman called on mass organizations not to conduct illegal raids on people and places they deem as acting immorally in order to maintain social harmony and peace.
But Muslim hard-liners, affiliated with the Islam Defenders Front (FPI), have vowed to raid “sinful” bars amid rising intolerance. FPI leaders were quoted by newspapers as asserting that they will take firm action against the sale of alcohol, strip shows and prostitution and would send members to spy on sinful activities, pointing out that they would not hesitate to conduct their own raids if the police failed to uphold the law and maintain public order properly.
But Jakarta’s public order agency (Satpol PP) urged hard-liners to refrain from taking the law into their own hands, promising to conduct sweeps of Jakarta, targeting the 1,800 establishments subject to Ramadhan regulations.
Almost 900 bars, nightclubs, massage parlors, pachinko parlors and pool halls have said they will remain closed for the entire month.
Without much fanfare, the House of Representatives enacted on Tuesday three pieces of legislation on the protection and empowerment of farmers and cattle breeders, the eradication of illegal logging and deforestation and aerospace management.
The most significant of the new laws is the one which will require the government to provide agricultural insurance for farmers to cover losses caused by crop failure due to natural disasters, pests, outbreaks of infectious plant disease or severe weather.
The law will also protect local farmers from excessive foreign competition by restricting farm commodity imports whenever local supplies are adequate to meet domestic demand and limiting imports only through specific seaports.
The specific entry gateway ports for imports will be located far from the major producing areas of the imported commodities and will be equipped with quarantine facilities.
Regional development banks are required by the law to set up departments specializing in extending microloans to
farmers and cattle breeders.
The law also obliges the central government to set up a commodity fund to support the building of buffer stocks of particular commodities in a concerted bid to protect farmers from excessive price volatility.
In addition to the financial empowerment, the law also aims to give Indonesia’s estimated 41 million farmers greater political voice and lobbying power by increasing government support for farmers’ associations and cooperatives. .
The new law on the prevention and eradication of deforestation was billed as the most comprehensive legislation against all kinds of forest-related crimes.
The House and government claimed that the new law would provide stronger legal foundations for law enforcers to cope with forestry crimes, and a deterrent effect to prevent new crimes. However, a coalition of environmental organizations and anticorruption activists has opposed the legislation, saying they will soon file for a judicial review of the law at the Constitutional Court.
Most obviously missing from the new law, according to green campaigners, are provisions on forest fires and slash-and-burn practices of the type that caused more than two weeks of heavy haze in Riau, Singapore and Malaysia last month.
The coalition of NGOs asserted that the new law seemed to be completely decoupled from prevailing forestry-related laws and regulations and did not make clear distinction between indigenous and state forests.
The environmentalists claimed the new law instead added to the confusion of overlapping and conflicting regulations regarding forestry issues.
The House saw the enactment of the law on aerospace management as an important move to strengthen the government control of satellites which are essential for data gathering, including those on taxpayers and tax objects.
