Class action suit against Sutiyoso, Megawati opens

Class action suit against Sutiyoso, Megawati opens

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Hundreds of flood victims who packed a court room at the Central
Jakarta District Court looked relieved when the presiding judge
opened on Thursday the hearing of their class action suit against
the President, the Jakarta governor and the West Java governor,
as it had already been postponed twice.

As many as 15 representatives demanded the accused pay each of
them Rp 100 million (around US$10,480) for material losses and a
total of Rp 1.2 trillion to repair damaged public facilities.

"The accused had failed to give an early warning to Jakartans
even though the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) had
announced that the rainfall would increase in January and
February," lawyer Azas Tigor Nainggolan, the coordinator for the
advocacy team, told the court.

The plaintiffs' team of lawyers consisting of 32 pro bono
lawyers while President Megawati Soekarnoputri is represented by
state lawyers from the Attorney General's Office and West Java
Governor A.R. Nuriana is represented by his office' legal agency.
Governor Sutiyoso, however, is represented by top lawyers
Mohammad Assegaf and Yan Juanda Saputra.

Previously, presiding judge Kornel Sianturi was forced to
postpone the hearing due to the absence of the accused's lawyers
-- with the exception of Sutiyoso's lawyers.

The accused were also sued for their failure to provide
necessary emergency action, which forced more than 97,000
families or 365,000 people to leave their homes and seek
temporary shelter for several weeks.

The city administration, which failed to take proper measures
in preparation for the floods, has tried to evade responsibility.
They blamed nature, saying that 40 percent of the city is located
below sea level.

Tigor said that Governor Sutiyoso himself admitted that the
city administration had only 54 boats to evacuate flood victims.

"Worse still, the accused used a lengthy procedure to help
flood victims. Consequently, a flood victim could have been left
to drown while waiting a day and night to be evacuated," Tigor
asserted.

The plaintiffs represented five groups that suffered during
the recent floods: victims whose family members had died, those
who fell sick due to flood-related illnesses, those who lost
their property, those whose property was damaged and those who
had lost their means of livelihood due to the floods.

Presiding judge Sianturi suggested that both parties settle
the dispute outside court. However, the accused' lawyers have not
yet made a decision.

The hearing will resume in two weeks to hear the accused's
response to the suit.

Class action is actually nothing new in the country's legal
system. In fact, the Central Jakarta District Court has ruled in
favor of three class action suits.

The first case occurred in October last year when the court
ruled in favor of nine consumers of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG)
against state-owned oil company Pertamina for arbitrarily
increasing the price of LPG.

In the second case, evicted people in Karang Anyar, Central
Jakarta, won in their suit against the city administration, which
evicted them last year in violation of standard procedures.
Recently, the court declared the city administration guilty of
violating the law as they conducted a raid on pedicab drivers,
also in violation of standard procedures.