Ki Hajar's offspring told to vacate house

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.
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