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.