More names of 'rotten politicians' soon

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.