Shitty Sinetron, Problematic Provisions, & Cloaked up Covid-19 Cases
And there's more where those came from
Quite an eventful week we’ve had as netizens were up in arms about a soap opera starring a 15 year old as a pregnant third wife of a horny pedophiliac polygamist. If that’s not enough of a shock, find out what the TV station did after all the protests. A Covid-19 report from Reuters may not have shocked people but at least it gives comparative figures to the official numbers. On top of that, the upcoming Criminal Code, one that’s been in the works for as long as we can remember, manages to stay controversial by imposing moral codes and restricting certain personal rights. Check out the Quick Reads too.
Indosiar Under Fire for Producing Polygamist and Pedophiliac Soap Opera
A soap opera about a polygamist who tricked a sweet and innocent minor into becoming his third wife. What could possibly go wrong?
Thankfully, many people find the concept of “Suara Hati Istri: Zahra” disturbing, accusing the creators and network of promoting polygamy and child marriage. People also felt that having a 39-year-old actor Panji Saputra sharing an intimate scene with 15-year-old Lea Ciarachel was creepy AF.
Online petitions were launched to get television station Indosiar to axe the sinetron. Many also went to the soap opera’s social media pages and expressed condemnations. Meanwhile, critical posts on the soap opera went viral and when something goes viral in Indonesia, the government decides to do something about it.
The Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) said they have reached out to Indosiar and the television station agreed to recast the lead character Zahra.
Literally days later, Indosiar hastily wrote, shot and aired an episode on how Zahra had to undergo a facial reconstruction surgery after her car drove off a cliff, a crash which in the real world would have been fatal. It was revealed in the episode that the 15-year-old actress Lea had been replaced with 18-year-old Hanna Kirana.
That wasn’t enough to satisfy anyone. Not only did Indosiar replace a teenager with another but they haven’t changed the concept, plot and tone of the series.
A day after the episode aired, the KPI announced that Indosiar has temporarily stopped production of the soap opera as they conduct “an internal evaluation to change the concept of the program.”
It seems that Indosiar is simply rebranding the soap opera with a new title “Istri Impian” (Dream Wife) with pretty much the same cast. They really think we’re that stupid huh?
The Controversial Criminal Code
For years, the parliament has been trying to revise the antiquated Criminal Code, which is based on a 1918 criminal code imposed during the Dutch colonial era. Little has changed since it was formally adopted by the country in 1946 and efforts to update the law have been around since 1958.
One of the reasons why is that parliamentarians have been trying to insert all sorts of controversial provisions and this time it is no exception.
The latest draft of the bill is riddled with some might consider criminalization on what should be our well-protected basic human rights and over-criminalization of what should be a misdemeanor.
If the bill is passed into law the way it is today, people could be jailed up to 3.5 years for insulting the “dignity” of the president and the vice president and up to 4.5 years if the insult was made on social media.
Lawmakers also sought to imprison practitioners of black magic offering supernatural services to “bring upon others disease, deaths, mental or physical pain” with a three year imprisonment max. This proposed punishment is more severe than what is being recommended for those offering to help others break the law which is one year in prison max.
The proposed criminal code is also seeking to expand the definition of extramarital sex to include singles and penalize unmarried couples who live together with up to six months imprisonment or Rp10 million. Currently, only married people can be criminalized for extramarital sex and that is only if it is reported by their spouses. Lawmakers propose that this should be expanded to parents, offsprings and village chiefs.
The only good news we’ve seen so far is that they will expand the definition of rape to include any forced sexual act by anyone to anyone, not just male to female and punishments will be upgraded if the victim suffers physical injuries, dies, is a child, or the perp is the victim’s own parent (biological or otherwise).
We Likely Have Millions More Covid-19 Cases Than Reported
Indonesia may have had 15% of its population infected by Covid-19 (around 40 million people) instead of 0.4% in January this year but most people may not have realized it because they could have been asymptomatic or had light symptoms. The poor level of testing across the country very likely played a significant role in underexposing the cases.
According to Reuters, recent studies showed that the rate of Covid-19 infection in Indonesia is many times greater than reported in official figures, while Bali’s rate of infection between September and November 2020 was reportedly 53x higher. By the end of January we had just over 1 million official cases nationally but today that number has grown to 1.85 million.
In February this year, the President mandated that contact tracing be conducted to 30 close contacts for every confirmed case in five key provinces; Jakarta, Jogja, West Java, Central Java, and Bali. By the end of that month, the five provinces had had over 766,000 cases or 57% of the national tally. It took the President until May to acknowledge that the country’s testing and tracing effort are still far below what’s required by the WHO. He said that we’re still “weak” in those aspects.
Those five provinces today have over 1 million official cases, matching the national number at the end of January and still proportionally identical to February at 57% of the national number. If we follow his instruction today, with 5000 to 7000 new daily cases, at 57% we should be tracing and testing 80,000 to 120,000 people every day, or if we do it for every case, up to 210,000. We are currently only testing between 40,000-80,000 people daily according to the daily reports from the Health Ministry and BNPB, which we report back to you via our Twitter account for over a year now.
While our testing numbers need to be far more than what is currently being conducted, on field limitations, such as the lack of qualified workforce and testing capacities, are apparently still far from being able to meet those numbers.
Quick Reads
Filed Under That Took Long Enough
The State Administrative High Court has reversed the reversal of Jokowi’s decision to fire KPAI commissioner Sitti Hikmawatty following her statement that women can get pregnant by being in the same swimming pool with men. She won’t be returning to KPAI.
There will be no hajj pilgrimage from Indonesia this year, Religious Affairs Minister Yaqut Cholil Qoumas announced, as Saudi Arabia has yet to announce their official plans. Since hajj season is in July, there’s hardly any time to prepare for official pilgrimage travels.
Filed Under China Only. For Now
Sinovac’s chairman announced that their vaccine has received clearance in China to be administered to children from 3-17 years old and the vaccine generated only mild adverse reactions in kids. Separately, trials for a third dose among adults show a 20x improvement after six months.
Filed Under This Could Have Been Avoided
37 teachers and staff at a high school in Pekalongan have been infected with Covid-19 after a teacher with Covid-19 symptoms insisted on going to work because he did not want to see his daily allowance cut. The school is now suspended until 11 June. Did the government see this coming?
Vaccines for Domestic Travelers
Tourism Ministry Sandiaga Uno floated the idea of domestic vaccine tourism for those willing to go to certain tourist destinations around the country. He said that this is to stem the flow of those taking advantage of vaccine travel packages to the US. Umm, different vaccines? We don’t have Pfizer, Moderna, or J&J yet and the national rate of vaccination is still below the floor target of 500,000 doses per day.