An Indonesian lawmaker faces an ethics investigation after he was photographed apparently watching porn on his tablet computer in parliament, an official said on Sunday.
Arifinto, who represents the conservative Islamic Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), was caught on camera on Friday looking at a pornographic image on the tablet, which he held slightly under his table, during a plenary session.
The photograph, first posted on a local news website, was picked up by other media and sparked a public outcry on the Twitter microblogging site over the weekend.
"Shameful. Just flog and stone (him). Improper!" user @benimonzieur tweeted.
The case is under investigation, House Ethics Council deputy chairman Nudirman Munir said on Sunday.
"We're carrying out intensive verification to see he had indeed violated the code of ethics," he told the media.
"If proven true, this is a serious violation as he would have ruined the image and dignity of parliament. It's best that he resign, or face dismissal," Munir added.
Arifinto however claimed he had unintentionally opened an email link that led to ‘pornographic images’, the Jakarta Globe newspaper reported.
"I stopped watching it and then erased it from my inbox," he said.
Mainly Muslim Indonesia has been scandalised over the past few months by the online release of homemade sex videos involving three popular celebrities, fuelling proposals to filter the Internet.
Canadian company Research in Motion (RIM), the maker of BlackBerry smartphones, started filtering porn in Indonesia in January at the demand of Communications and Information Technology Minister Tifatul Sembiring.
Sembiring is also a leader of the PKS, which is a member of the ruling coalition.