Ki Hajar's offspring told to vacate house

YOGYAKARTA (JP): The district court here ordered yesterday the offspring of Ki Hadjar Dewantara, the hero who laid the foundations of the country's education system, to vacate the house they inherited.

The Taman Siswa foundation, which runs the Taman Siswa schools that Dewantara established in 1922, claims Dewantara donated the property located in the Taman Siswa school complex here to the foundation.

On a separate matter the court ruled in favor of the defendant, Mrs. Bambang Sukowati Dewantara, who counter-sued the foundation demanding that it reinstate the Dewantaras' right to have a say in the decision-making process regarding the schools' property.

The court gave them a fortnight to decide if they would appeal.

The foundation accused Mrs. Bambang of breaching a 1963 agreement in which the Dewantaras gave the property to the foundation. In return, the Dewantaras were accorded the right to have a say in the decision-making processes, which she said was never honored.

Lawyers from the Yogyakarta Legal Aid Institute representing the family of Bambang Sukowati Dewantara were disappointed with the ruling but said they had not decided whether they would appeal.

A. Budi Hartono, one of the lawyers, said the foundation had refused to resolve the dispute by way of musyawarah, or consensus through deliberation, before it took the case to court.

"The legal action shows that the foundation shunned the long- held traditional principles of musyawarah and disregarded the spirit of nationalism," he said.

Ki Hadjar, who lived from 1899 to 1959 and whose real name was Raden Mas Soewardi Soerjaningrat, was also known as one the country's pioneering journalists. He worked for numerous newspapers, such as De Express, De Beweging and Persatoean Hindia.

After Indonesia proclaimed independence in 1945, then president Sukarno appointed him the first minister of education. (23)