More names of 'rotten politicians' soon

Muninggar Sri Saraswati and A. Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Another list naming "rotten" politicians would be released to the public soon, the group behind the publications said on Tuesday.

The National Movement Against Rotten Politicians, a grouping of non-government organizations, said the release would help educate the public about the quality of House of Representatives candidates.

"Rotten" politicians were those believed to have been involved in or supported human rights violations, corruption, money politics and other forms of graft, the group said.

Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) activist Danang Widoyoko said the group was not deterred by possible legal action against it by the politicians whose names were included in the list.

Last week, it released a list of politicians vying for legislative seats in a four-page newspaper called Sosok ("Public Figures").

It said it had also put the list of politicians on its website www.antipolitisibusuk.org.. A total of 12 million out of 215 million Indonesians have Internet access.

However, on Tuesday the website could still not be accessed.

Danang said the site was still under construction. It had not been hacked into or shut down by cybervandals, he said.

The website would feature full names and brief track records of the politicians, he said.

Fellow activist Lucky Djani reminded the public a website with a similar address, www.antipolitisibusuk.net, did not belong to the group.

"The website promotes a certain group claiming to be against corrupt practices," he said.

In other developments, relatives of victims in the May Riots and the Trisakti and Semanggi incidents in 1998 called on the public not to choose legislative candidates who were allegedly involved in human rights violations.

Accompanied by activists from the National Commission on Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), the victims released the names of 26 legislative candidates believed to have been involved in or supported human rights violations.

"These candidates are either directly or indirectly involved in human rights abuses," activist Andika Risqi said at the Trisakti University campus in West Jakarta.

Most of the candidates had already been announced by the National Movement Against Rotten Politicians on Saturday.

Four Trisakti students were shot and killed on May 12, 1998, when they, along with thousands of students, staged a massive rally to demand the resignation of former president Soeharto.

The shooting triggered massive riots in Jakarta and many places across the country on May 13 and 14, and hundreds of people, many ethnic Chinese, were killed.

Dozens of Chinese Indonesian women were also raped during the riots.

Members of the House of Representatives (DPR) commission later investigating the incidents had declared no human rights violations took place.