This is a bit of a gloomy Sunday in Jakartass Towers. Maybe it's because the atmosphere is oppressive with a pending tropical storm which will surely test our roof. Or maybe it's an accumulation of snippets which don't make for optimism.
Religious Affairs
1. Parliament has just passed a new Civil Registration Bill containing a very contentious article: citizens are required to denote their religion which has to be one of only six 'official' religions - Islam, Christianity, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. Perhaps a seventh should be added to the list - Suhartoism.
Church and State go hand in hand with greed and hate.
2. As chair of the Religious Affairs Ctte. of Golkar, in parliamentary terms the largest political party, Yahya Zaini was behind the introduction of the Anti-Pornography Law. Now, thanks to a mobile phone with a video camera, everybody can see for themselves that he is not very powerful and wonder how, in an extra-marital affair, he made a now famous dangdut singer pregnant.
He will probably get to keep his seat in Parliament. She may be prosecuted for having an abortion - at his instigation.
3. Another religious affair which is gripping the country's media is that of hitherto respected Muslim cleric, Abdullah Gymnastiar, popularly known as A'a (elder brother) Gym. He has taken a second wife, a 38 year old widow and former photo model, Alfarini Eridani. Polygamy, some argue, is ok for Muslim men if their first wife agrees and she can no longer bear him children or is otherwise incapacitated.
Aa Gym justifies his action by saying: "Women tend to be monogamous, that's how their 'software' is ... But men, you know... their 'software' is different." He also comments: "All around us, promiscuity is rampant, children being born out of wedlock is tolerated."
He has demonstrated this by fathering seven children with first wife Ninih Muthmainah. I suspect she's had enough, but who are we to question the arrangement? It's not, thankfully, our affair.
Moral Affairs
Public trust in the government's efforts to fight corruption has plummeted from 81 percent last year to 29 percent this year, a survey has found.
The Global Corruption Report issued yesterday by corruption watchdog Transparency International and pollster Gallup International found that 50 percent of 1,000 Indonesians interviewed in mid-2006 said efforts to fight corruption were not effective.
Jakarta Post
Addicktion
It's said that heroin addicts put up with the bad times because they really enjoy the initial high. That must be why I watched every minute of Charlton's humiliation last night. .
On a good day .....
