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.