Governor complains about press reports on him

Governor complains about press reports on him

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Governor Sutiyoso was unable to remain silent over media
reports that often criticized him in handling the current floods
here, saying that the reports were not proportional.

During a meeting with editors at City Hall on Thursday,
Sutiyoso noted that one of the reports compared him and the
floods with New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the 11 Sept.
attack.

"The attack, which was carried out by human beings, could not
be prevented by the U.S., with its sophisticated intelligence,
while the floods were a natural disaster," the governor said.

The local media here compared Giuliani, who was admired for
his leadership after the attack, with Sutiyoso, who was often
called upon to resign for his failure to control the floods.

"I'm sure that I would have been better if I had been mayor of
New York. And he (Giuliani) could have done nothing about the
flooding if he had been governor here," Sutiyoso said.

He reiterated that demands for his resignation by several
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were over-exaggerated and
not representative of the people of Jakarta.

"Many people still support me. I'm responsible for the
shortcomings in dealing with the floods but I will not resign,"
he said.

The NGOs, such as the Indonesian Environmental Forum (Walhi),
the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute, the Urban Poor Consortium and
the Indonesian Consumers Foundation (YLKI), demanded that the
next Jakarta governor should not come from the military and
should be elected by a direct gubernatorial election.

The governor, who is from the military, considered that such
demands were more a political move and had nothing to do with the
floods, which paralyzed almost all parts of the city for almost
two weeks recently. He accused the NGOs of trying to propose
certain names as candidates for the next governor.

He complained that the media reported only the slowness of his
administration to deal with the flooding and never on his own and
his subordinates' hard work.

"I stayed in my office for four nights and slept late during
the floods in order to get quickly appraised of the problem. But
the media didn't report that," he groaned.

Although the floods had indeed been predicted long before, the
city administration failed to prepare itself to tackle them. Help
for the flood victims came mostly from the public, such as NGOs
and student groups.

Sutiyoso admitted on Thursday that many of his subordinates
had had to secure their own families first since their houses had
also been inundated by the floods.