Published on January 29, 2006

The government is against the publishing of a local edition of Playboy but has no legal grounds to ban the men’s magazine, a bemused Vice President Jusuf Kalla has said.

“The government has no authority at all when it comes to licensing for mass media. We no longer have what once was called the SIUPP [publishing licence], so anyone can publish anything. If we applied the SIUPP again, [the press] would definitely be infuriated,” he said in response to reporters’ questions.

A bill is before the House of Representatives on “pornography and porn-related acts”, but it may only be passed after the publication, which has drawn strong protests from religious groups, is launched in March by PT Velvet Silver Media.

The SIUPP was required for all media during the three-decade long administration of Suharto, and was often used as a tool to repress freedom of speech because the government issued the licence. Since Suharto resigned in 1998, publishers have only been required to register their publications with the government.

After conducting Friday prayers at a mosque inside his office compound, Kalla grinned when journalists asked his opinion about the local publication of the magazine.

“Well, I hope not,” he said of the scheduled launch. “The government is in the position of disagreeing with it.”

He added that measures to curb the content of such adult magazines should be part of the bill when it was passed into law, saying Indonesia was not as permissive as other countries.

“This isn’t America, you know. Even Singapore doesn’t allow the magazine to be published there. So the plan [for the publication] is not proper.”

Asked about the statement of publisher Ponti Carolus that the local edition of the magazine would not contain nudity, Kalla said it would be tantamount to false advertising.

“It would be fooling the consumers. You shouldn’t provide false fantasies to consumers by using the name of Playboy but with different content,” he said. “But if there’s nudity, it would be against our ethics here,” he quickly added, amid raised eyebrows and scattered giggles from the journalists.

“Well, I suppose I’ll have to discuss it first with Pak Sofyan,” he said after a brief pause, referring to Information and Communication Minister Sofyan Djalil.

The Jakarta Post

Asia News Network

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