Bintang gets 34 months for insulting the President

JAKARTA (JP): Controversial politician Sri Bintang Pamungkas was sentenced yesterday to two years and 10 months imprisonment for calling President Soeharto a dictator.

The Central Jakarta District Court found Bintang, who lost his seat in the House of Representatives in May last year, guilty of slandering the head of state.

Moments after presiding judge Syoffinan Soemantri read the guilty verdict, a man's shoe thrown from the public gallery barely missed him. Syoffinan quickly ordered police officers, who were guarding the packed courtroom, to arrest the young man who had thrown the shoe at him.

Friends of Bintang said they could not identify the young man as belonging to the regular group of supporters which had followed the trial for the past seven months.

There was pandemonium outside the courthouse where around 500 Bintang supporters, mostly young people, chanted and sang patriotic songs to show solidarity with him. Some of them were wearing white headbands with the inscription Oposisi Indonesia (Indonesian Opposition Group).

Another group, calling themselves anti-Bintang, were also present to counter the noise with their own songs.

Meanwhile, a strong squad of police and soldiers were on standby in and around the courthouse. There was no incident, but traffic along Jl. Gajah Mada was heavily congested.

The court agreed with the prosecutors' charge that Bintang had made a slanderous statement against the President when he gave a lecture before Indonesian students in Berlin in April last year. References to "dictator" were made during the question and answer session after the lecture.

Bintang has denied that he specifically called the President a dictator and stressed that his quote was taken out of context and he was paraphrasing a question that had come from the floor.

He gave the lecture at about the same time that President Soeharto was visiting Germany.

Police initially began building a case against Bintang around reports that he had taken part in a street demonstration against President Soeharto in several German towns. However, when they could not support this with evidence, they turned to his lectures.

Bintang had represented the United Development Party (PPP) in the House of Representatives since 1992. He lost his seat in May of last year during the course of the police investigation. The PPP leaders said Bintang had repeatedly contradicted the party's official lines on many political issues.

Bintang told the court yesterday that he would file an appeal against the sentence. He called the court "unfair and dishonest" and denounced the panel of judges for succumbing to government pressure.

Judge Syoffinan in his verdict dismissed the chief argument presented by Bintang's lawyers who said that the Article 134 of the Criminal Code, under which he was charged, was outdated.

The lawyers, led by Adnan Buyung Nasution, had argued in court that the said article was a legacy of the Dutch colonial government which introduced the law to protect its queen. The lawyers also argued that Article 134 has repeatedly been used by the government to silence its critics.

The prosecuting attorneys had demanded a four-year jail term for Bintang. The maximum punishment in Article 134 is six years.

Judge Syoffinan said that in setting the sentence, he took into consideration that Bintang never once showed any remorse for insulting the integrity of the President, and that he also failed to live up to his responsibility as a legislator.

"Before going to Germany to give talks, Bintang should have asked permission from the House speaker, or at least informed the leader of his party's faction," the judge said.

It was not immediately clear when Bintang would begin his term in jail. (16)