The Jakarta Globe

Visiting Lasama Reveals Timor Presidential Bid

The Jakarta Globe

Visiting Lasama Reveals Timor Presidential Bid

Visiting president of East Timor’s National Parliament, Fernando de Araujo has confirmed his intention to run in 2012 presidential race in his country.  


“I am going to participate in East Timor’s democracy by running as a presidential candidate in the 2012 presidential election in March,” De Araujo, who is also known as Lasama told the Jakarta Globe  during a brief stopover in Jakarta on Saturday. 

In the 2007 presidential election, Lasama took third place with 19.18 percent of the vote. He later pledged the votes he had received to eventual winner Jose Ramos-Horta.  

This time, he said, he already had support from the Democratic Party, which he chairs. “This decision was made because I want to participate in the country’s development,” he said. 

Lasama, who was jailed for six years in the 1990s while East Timor was still part of Indonesia, said there was no need to look back and be bitter about the past. 

He said it was important that ties between the two neighbors improve. 

“Although 12 years ago we used to be part of Indonesia, we do not have to look to the past. We look forward to the future. The improvement of diplomatic relations between Indonesia and East Timor is really needed, especially in the economic, education and national defense fields,” he said. 

He said there were about 6,000 Timorese currently studying in Indonesia because East Timor was not yet able to provide them with a good education system.  

“We are currently establishing the curriculum. I have to admit that the establishment of the curriculum is still deadlocked because we still lack a standardized language,” he said. 

Tetun, an official language, is an oral language and has no standardized written form.  Lasama said East Timor still relied on outside assistance. 

“As a new country, East Timor still needs UN assistance, at least until the next presidential election because there is some administration revamping which needs to be done.” 

However, he said the new country had already come a long way. 

“East Timor has produced some regulations such as the criminal code, and we have ratified some international conventions, which many countries have not yet done,” he said. 

In the Timorese presidential elections, if no candidate initially receives an outright majority, a second round of elections will be held pitting the two leading candidates against one another a few weeks after the first round. 

Incumbent Ramos-Horta has indicated he may not stand for re-election, but a final decision has not yet been made. 

Another likely candidate is Fretilin’s Francisco “Lu-Olo” Guterres.

Prita Prosecutor ‘Just Doing My Duty’

The Jakarta Globe

Riyadi, the prosecutor who argued the case against Prita, said on Sunday that neither personal motive nor hard feelings led him to take the case and that he was just doing his job. 


“It needs to be understood that I filed an appeal against her because I follow legal procedures and that there was no other motivation,” said Riyadi, who also handled the infamous ox-tail theft case against an elderly maid in Tangerang. 

He declined to comment on the Supreme Court ruling until his office received the official copy. His boss, Chaerul Amir, said he had learned about the ruling on the court’s Web site last week and was prepared to support the sentence if it included imprisonment. 

In November 2009, when he was arguing in the Tangerang court for Prita to receive a six-month jail sentence, Riyadi said the case had become very complicated because of the thousands of people voicing opposition in a Facebook page. 

“We are handling a very difficult case because of the strong public opinion that the defendant is not guilty, regardless of the fact that the trial has not yet concluded,” he said at the time. 

“But justice must not bow to pressure just because the defendant has support from so many Facebookers or whatever.” 

Nearly 400,000 people joined a Facebook support group for Prita after her plight was reported in local and national media in 2009. 

Prita has maintained her innocence, saying that as a patient, she should have the right to make a complaint about bad treatment at the hospital. 

Supporters outraged over the result of the appeal have criticized prosecutors for bringing the Electronic Transaction and Information Law (ITE) into the case without consulting the police. ITE carries stiffer penalties for defamation — six years in jail — than the Criminal Code. 

The Tangerang prosecutor’s office has also come under scrutiny after it was revealed that the hospital involved in the suit, Omni International Hospital, had offered free medical checkups to its officials. 

Prominent Jakarta lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis suggested that the recommended sentence in the Supreme Court’s ruling be delayed until the case review by Prita was decided. 

Under the Criminal Code Procedures, a case review should not delay the imprisonment, but Todung insisted the circumstances of the Tangerang mother’s case were extraordinary. 

“Prita is using the technology that others also use to get and share information, and she must not be stopped from using it,” Todung said. “I really regret that she was found guilty because of it. It would be better if the implementation of the Supreme Court ruling were delayed until after the case review.”

Facing Prison, Prita Has Just One Question: Why Me?

The Jakarta Globe

angerang mother Prita Mulyasari, facing jail time after the Supreme Court found her guilty of libel, said she did not understand why law enforcers were so eager to go after the vulnerable while taking a soft stance on high-profile graft cases. 

“My case is just one of many small cases that prosecutors have eagerly pursued. I really find it odd that our law-enforcement officials prefer to handle small cases rather than big corruption cases,” the 34-year-old said in an interview with the Jakarta Globe on Sunday. 

“Why are things so backward in the Indonesian legal system?” 

A notice on the Supreme Court’s Web site said that Prita had been found guilty of libel under the 2008 Electronic Transactions and Information (ITE) Law for e-mails she sent to friends in which she complained about the service at Tangerang’s Omni International Hospital. 

Her protracted legal battle began when the upscale hospital reported her to police for defamation and filed a separate civil case in the middle of 2008. 

The mother of three pointed to another case in Tangerang in which an elderly maid was detained on trivial charges of stealing plates and ox tail from her employer. The maid was eventually acquitted after the trial sparked a public outcry. 

Regarding her case, Prita said the ITE Law remained contentious and had never been adequately explained.

“I don’t thing the ITE Law has ever been properly explained to people. People need to be aware that they can be charged under this law for sending private e-mails,” she said. “I had heard of the ITE Law but I didn’t understand the details of it.” 

Prita said that during her trial, even the judges and the prosecutors didn’t fully understand the law, “let alone ordinary people like me.” 

But the thing that confuses her most is just why she was such a major target for prosecutors, who doggedly pursued her case for more than two years, even after the Tangerang District Court had acquitted her of the criminal charges and the Supreme Court had cleared her in the civil suit. 

“I’m wondering if the prosecutors used their hearts when prosecuting my case, which inflicted no losses on the state whatsoever,” she said. 

“Why didn’t they just stop there when I won this case? Why did they file an appeal against my acquittal?” 

The libel case became a public issue in early 2009 when Prita was detained for three weeks despite concerns that her second child still needed to breast-feed and allegations that prosecutors had accepted bribes from the hospital. 

In that election year, many prominent figures, including former President Megawati Sukarnoputri and top officials from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party, visited Prita in jail to show support. 

“I was so glad that so many people were supporting me at that time, including some prominent public figures,” Prita said. “But I just hope that their support was not merely to get sympathy ahead of the presidential election in July 2009. I hope that they really meant it and were really sincere about it.” 

Now, with a third child who is just a year old, Prita faces imprisonment again and is expected to learn the length of her sentence at a hearing today.

Sidewalk Church Protest Remains Civil Despite Odds

The Jakarta Globe

A protest in Bogor that had been expected to turn violent remained civil on Sunday as a group of people in the mostly Muslim community voiced opposition to the Yasmin church congregation holding services on a sidewalk outside of its sealed-off church. 


Global rights group Amnesty International earlier reported that the congregation had received threats from the local community that if the services did not stop by Sunday, “anarchy” would erupt. 

“In the last couple of weeks, the religious hard-line groups haven’t showed up to protest against us using the sidewalks to hold a Sunday service,” church spokesman Bona Sigalingging said. “However, there was a group of people present, even the head of my community.” 

The group did not threaten them, he said. 

“This group did not come up with intimidating banners or shouting sectarian words,” he said. “They even sang some national songs as they asked us to move somewhere else because sidewalks were not a place for worship.” 

The city government had earlier asked the congregation to move to an alternative location, the Harmoni Yasmin building, instead of using the sidewalk to avoid clashing with protesters. 

Bona said his congregation has no plans to move the service to the Harmoni Yasmin building or anywhere else. 

“They are saying the sidewalk is not a place for worship, but neither is the Harmoni Yasmin building,” he said. “We just want our church reopened.” 

The Bogor administration revoked the church’s building permit, alleging that the congregation had falsified signatures to obtain it. The Supreme Court has ordered the church reopened, but the city has refused to comply. 

“Basically, this [disturbance] is the result of the Bogor mayor ignoring the Supreme Court ruling,” Bona said. 

“If they want us to leave the pavement, let’s unite and urge the Bogor mayor to reopen the Yasmin church. It’s as simple as that.” 

Bona said police officers were deployed to secure the area and prevent clashes. 

“We really appreciate how serious the police have been about ensuring security for us while we were doing the Sunday service in recent weeks,” Bona said. 

On Friday, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on attacks against minorities such as Christians and Ahmadiyah in Indonesia, shining a spotlight the violent persecution of minorities in the c ountry. 

The resolution expressed “grave concern at the incidents of violence against religious minorities, particularly Ahmadi Muslims, Christians, Baha’i and Buddhists” and called on the Indonesian authorities to repeal or revise local bylaws governing heresy. 

In June, a delegation from Christian Solidarity Worldwide returned from a three-week visit to Indonesia with first-hand evidence of increasing violence against religious minorities, particularly Christians and the Ahmadiya Muslim community, the group said in a statement. 

CSW visited churches in Bekasi and Bandung that had been forced to close, and it met with pastors who faced increasing harassment, threats an d attacks

Hey Fans, Fancy Harry Potter And the Flight to Singapore?

The Jakarta Globe

Hey Fans, Fancy Harry Potter And the Flight to Singapore?


As London fans bade farewell to the world’s most famous boy wizard at the premiere of the final Harry Potter movie on Friday and worldwide audiences queued for tickets, film-starved Indonesian fans were busy organizing trips to Singapore.


“I followed Harry Potter from the first movie until ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1,’ and I always watched the films several times in the theater,” Shafiq, a coordinator for the 6,000-strong Indo Harry Potter online community, told the Jakarta Globe on Friday.


He said there was no way he wouldn’t watch the eighth and final film of what is arguably the most successful Hollywood franchise on the big screen as well.


And so he and a number of other members of the fan club, ditching original plans for a costume premiere party complete with wands and black robes, will travel to Singapore next week in time for the Thursday premiere of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2” in the city-state.


Warner Bros., the producer of the blockbuster series, is one of six major Hollywood studios under the Motion Picture Association of America whose films have not been screened in Indonesia since Feb. 17, when a dispute with the Indonesian government prompted a foreign-film boycott.


The Finance Ministry has announced a new tax scheme meant to resolve the dispute and head off the drastic slump in ticket sales since the Hollywood film boycott started, but it has maintained a ban on two major film importers — Camila and Satrya — until Rp 22 billion ($2.6 million) in back taxes and interest was paid.


The importers, both under the 21 Cineplex group, have been responsible for bringing in MPAA films. Tourism and Culture Minister Jero Wacik has said the problem now is the MPAA only wants to deal with importers with which it is familiar.


A sign of hope was the recent granting of a license to a new importer, Omega Film, which Jero said was also under the 21 Cineplex group. Group spokesman Noorca Massardi has consistently declined to comment throughout the entire negotiations.


But as it seems a resolution to the long-running problem won’t come in time for Harry Potter’s Indonesian fans to formally bid the series farewell, fans like Shafiq are not taking any chances.


“Watching it once isn’t enough for me, I need to watch it at least three times,” he said, adding that he would wear his Indo Harry Potter T-Shirt in Singapore. “And I also plan to watch another movie there that cannot be seen in Indonesia.” 

Activists Cry Foul at ‘Lenient’ Prosecutors in Ahmadiyah Trial

The Jakarta Globe

Rights activists expressed outrage on Thursday over the light jail terms sought for suspects in the deadly attack on Ahmadiyah followers in Banten in February, saying such leniency would not deter future violence.


“There is a lack of seriousness from law-enforcement officials in handling sectarian clashes, and this could pose a danger to national unity,” said Bonar Tigor Naipospos, the deputy chairman of the Setara Institute for Peace and Democracy.

His remarks came shortly after prosecutors at the Serang District Court in Banten recommended sentences of between five and seven months for 12 defendants accused of having a role in the Feb. 6 attack in Cikeusik subdistrict. Three followers of Ahmadiyah, a minority Muslim sect, were killed in the attack and five more were seriously injured.

“The seven-month demand is really weak,” Bonar said. “This was because the prosecutors saw the case as a spontaneous incident instead of a systematic attack.

“More than that, pressure from outside groups during the trial was also a factor in the weak sentencing demand. The state failed to provide adequate protection for prosecutors and judges during the trial.”

He was referring to the defendants’ vocal supporters who have crowded the courtroom throughout the trial.
Bonar said trials involving sectarian clashes needed the same high level of security provided for terrorism cases.

The prosecution was also criticized by activists for failing to charge the defendants with incitement of hatred, which carries a heavier maximum punishment.

“The prosecutors didn’t prepare the sentencing demand based on the evidence and the magnitude of the crime,” said Haris Azhar, the executive director of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras).

“They should have seen this as a very serious case because [the attack] occurred because of hatred spread by certain groups of people,” he said.

“It is clear to see that there is a lack of courage and ability on the part of the prosecutors to bring the hatred issue to trial, while [inciting hatred] is a very serious and important issue.”

The defendants have been charged with crimes ranging from provoking violence to assault. Still, the lesser of the charges, provocation, allows punishment of up to six years in jail.

Meanwhile, prosecutors have said the sentencing recommendation was light because the group of 25 Ahmadis involved in the incident was believed to have played a part in provoking the attack.

Prosecutors said the evidence showed members of the banned sect not only provoked the riot, but also filmed it and distributed the videos.

Sentences of seven months were sought for 10 defendants, while sentences of five and six months were sought for two others during the marathon hearings in Serang, the capital of Banten.

Rp 823b DPD Building Plans Draw Suspicion of Corruption

The Jakarta Globe

Rp 823b DPD Building Plans Draw Suspicion of Corruption

Anticorruption watchdogs accused the Regional Representative Council of budgeting Rp 517.2 billion ($60.5 million) more than necessary for their planned regional offices on Thursday.

The council, also known as the DPD, is in the process of building 33 four-story regional offices across several provinces at a total cost of Rp 823 billion, a sum that was approved in the 2010 state budget.

However, Firdaus Ilyas, Indonesia Corruption Watch’s budget coordinator, said the DPD had requested exorbitantly large office rooms for its members, leading to the project’s high price tag.

“According to our calculations, the DPD office building only needs a 1,799.55 square meter space, while they requested an area as large as 2,747.25 square meters,” Firdaus said.

“Each representative does not need a 100 square meter office [as was allocated], but only 16 square meters.”

The smaller space, he said, would drastically reduce the total cost of construction to Rp 305.57 billion, or an average of Rp 9.3 billion per building.

“Based on our calculations, DPD DKI Jakarta, for example, would only need Rp 9.8 billion,” Firdaus said.

ICW researcher Apung Widadi said the glaring markup should be a signal to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to investigate whether there is corruption behind the DPD’s building plan.

House of Representatives speaker Marzuki Alie has slammed the project as exorbitant, noting it had a higher cost per square meter of development than a planned office tower built in Jakarta for legislators, which the legislature was forced to shelve following a massive outcry over the Rp 1.13 trillion price tag.

DPD representatives could not be reached for comment on Thursday, but DPD secretary general Siti Nurbaya has said that the plan to construct the new buildings is based on recommendations made by the Ministry of Public Works, and a markup would therefore be impossible.

The DPD is ready to be monitored by the KPK, DPD deputy speaker La Ode Ida said.

Ministries Disagree Over Film Import Priorities

The Jakarta Globe

With major movies still missing from Indonesia’s screens, the Finance Ministry and the Culture and Tourism Ministry are at odds over whether or not the to address the lack of competition in the import of films.


Bambang Permadi Brodjonegoro, the head of fiscal affairs at the Finance Ministry, said the near-monopoly held by the country’s main film importers needed to end.

“Two film importers handle six major studios,” Bambang said. “We should ask the major studios, such as Walt Disney Pictures, Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox to open a representative office in Indonesia.”

He added that an alternative solution would be to make sure all major studios use a separate local business partner.

The Finance Ministry’s Directorate General of Customs recently granted a new foreign-film importing license to Omega Film. However, that company is believed to be related to major cinema chain 21 Cineplex.

Omega Film is also said to be linked to two film importers banned from bringing Hollywood films to Indonesia after they were ordered by the state to pay a total of Rp 31 billion ($3.6 million) in unpaid taxes. That demand was made shortly after the Motion Picture Association of America decided to stop exporting movies to Indonesia over a dispute on royalty calculations.

Culture and Tourism Minister Jero Wacik said on Wednesday that the specifics of the business model were less important than the problems currently preventing foreign films from entering the Indonesian market.

He added that a wider variety of film importers would not fix the royalty row, and that if a monopoly on importing would give the people access to blockbuster movies, then that option should not be rejected.

Culture Ministry Honors 24 for Preserving Indonesia’s Fading Arts

The Jakarta Globe
Culture Ministry Honors 24 for Preserving Indonesia’s Fading Arts

The government on Wednesday honored traditional artists, including the last living performer of a sacred Central Javanese dance, for preserving the dying cultures of their regions.


Minister of Culture and Tourism Jero Wacik recognized 24 individuals, including six “maestros” aged between 69 and 89, who had worked since their youth to keep their traditions alive.

One of them was Dariah, 83, from Banyumas, Central Java, whom the minister said was the only surviving person knowledgeable in the Lengger Lanang dance, which she performed at the awards ceremony.

“Indonesia has so many artists who have dedicated themselves to preserving and reviving their culture,” Jero said. “They do it simply because they love it.

“Therefore, it is the government’s duty to give them a reward for what they have done to the country.”

Another maestro, 75-year-old Katija, was awarded for preserving the kakula , a traditional brass percussion instrument from Central Sulawesi.

Throughout her years promoting the artifact, however, she has used a wooden version of the instrument because the metal version was expensive, according to Katija’s nephew.

“She only learned to play a homemade kakula, which is made from the wood of ketapang [or Indian almond tree],” the nephew told the minister on behalf of Katija, who does not speak Indonesian.

Prizes — a certificate and Rp 1.5 million ($175) in cash for each winner — were also handed to six famous artists, including poet Gerson Poyk and Sundanese puppeteer Asep Sunandar Sunarya.

Singer Franky Sahilatua and actress Tuti Indra Malaon were honored posthumously.

In another category, six art enthusiasts from across the archipelago were noted for their work in preserving a variety of art forms, from batik to the metal instrument Gong Sibolong.

The remaining winners were high school students who “contributed to dance and music.”

“[Their examples] show that in order to establish and preserve their own culture, they need to have strong passion and they must never be too tired to share their knowledge to young generations,” the minister said.

Jero added that no price could be put on the winners’ contributions to society.

“Even though they do not get paid as traditional artists, they have continued doing so,” he said. “Hopefully, this award can motivate the younger generation to get involved in preserving Indonesian culture because our country is rich in it.”

Jakarta Suggests Fees Range for Road Pricing Plan

The Jakarta Globe

A Jakarta official said on Wednesday that the tariff for the planned citywide electronic road pricing system was still yet to be finalized, as was the necessary regulations for its implementation.


Udar Pristono, head of the Jakarta Transportation Office, said it was considering an ERP rate of between Rp 6,500 and Rp 21,000 (75 cents and $2.50).

“However, we have not made the final decision yet because we need to consider the ERP rate based on the toll roads fee, the cost of hiring jockeys to get around the three-in-one carpool rule and also motorists’ ability to pay it,” he said.

The Jakarta administration should also consider the 2009 Regional Tax Law when deciding the ERP rate, he added.

The transportation office hopes to be able to complete all of the necessary regulations on the ERP later this year so it can be ready for implementation in 2012.

One possibility floated by the city has been to start with a higher rate of Rp 21,000 per vehicle and then revise the price after implementation following the response from the public.

“If the ERP rate is too expensive, then we will reduce it,” Udar said. “But if us too low, then we will increase it.”

Udar said that aside from the new ERP system, the government would also improve public transportation by adding more busway routes and launching a feeder system.

“There will be two feeder busways from the SCBD and Senayan areas that will take passengers to the Gelora Bung Karno busway stop, and also from Tanah Abang and Gambir to the Medan Merdeka Barat stop,” he said.

The city is also planning to buy 23 more buses and create five more busway corridors.

Asked to comment on the ERP system, Sudaryatmo, from the Indonesian Consumer Protection Foundation (YLKI), said it would help to reduce the use of private vehicles, but consumers still needed to be consulted before a price was set.

“The ERP rate needs to be decided based on the results of a survey on people’s willingness and ability to pay the tariff,” he said. “I don’t agree with a rate of Rp 100,000, because that would just be plain robbery.”

The Jakarta Police had earlier called for a fee high enough to discourage private car use — at between Rp 50,000 and Rp 100,000.

Sudaryatmo said the revenue from the ERP system should be used to improve the city’s pubic transportation facilities.

“Although the implementation of ERP is necessary to reduce the use of private cars, the government needs to also improve the availability of public transportation so that people have alternatives,” he said.

Outside of Jakarta, the government has also decided to implement ERP systems in Medan, Surabaya, Bandung and Makassar.

Transportation Minister Freddy Numberi said the central and regional governments were working on regulations and bylaws to support a law passed last month on traffic management that governs the implementation of the ERP system.