'No guarantee of press freedom in Constitution'

JAKARTA (JP): The 1945 Constitution does not specifically guarantee freedom of the press in Indonesia, leading mass communication expert Ashadi Siregar said yesterday.

Article 28 of the Constitution, which is considered the cornerstone of press freedom, refers to the supervision of freedom of expression through laws and does not explicitly guarantee such rights, Ashadi said.

Article 28 reads: "The freedom of association and assembly, of expressing thought and of issuing writings and the like, shall be prescribed by statutes."

"With that, the provisions in Article 28 of the 1945 Constitution do not have any meaning unless there is already an existing statute which regulates the freedom to associate and assemble along with the right to express one's thoughts both orally and through writing," Ashadi contended.

The lecturer at Yogyakarta's Gadjah Mada University's School of Political and Social Sciences said that article 28 differs from other articles which ensure specific rights of the people.

As an example he described article 27 and 29 of the Constitution.

Article 27 reads that "without exception" all citizens have equal positions before the law and government, while Article 29 says the state "shall guarantee" religious rights.

"It is unfortunate that the founders of our republic, despite themselves using the press as a means to fight for independence, did not explicitly insert the right of citizens to express and acquire information," Ashadi said during a two-day seminar on "Reconstructing the Goals of Our Republic" at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.

Speakers and commentators at the seminar said that the wording of the article was a compromise for those who drafted the Constitution and who thought that an explicit elaboration of press freedom would transform the country into a liberal state.

Legislation

The current press legislation is regulated in the 1982 law, which, according to Ashadi, "opens gaps allowing the state bureaucracy to impose its will."

Fikri Jufri, the former chief editor of the banned Tempo weekly, commented that it is imperative to pass legislation which protects the press from forced closures and bannings.

"As long as none is in existence, we can't talk about freedom of the press," said Fikri.

Tempo, along with two other publications -- DeTik and Editor -- had their publishing licenses revoked by the government last year for "editorial and administrative reasons".

Fikri stated that there has never been press freedom in Indonesia. He recalled that in the late 1960s and 1970s there was a tendency to stifle press freedom, pointing to the mass bannings of several publications in 1974.

If the government is discontent with the press, they should take legal action against the publications in question and not ban or revoke their licenses, he said. "One thing that has to be guaranteed by legislation is that no matter what happens it (a publication) cannot be killed."

He reasoned that no matter how harsh or critical a newspaper is, it can rarely threaten the survival of a government or topple its leaders.

The only extraordinary case was in the United States when the Watergate scandal exposed by the American press led to the resignation of then President Richard Nixon in 1974, he said.

According to Fikri, Indonesian officials are often too sensitive and cannot accept criticism. "As long as our officials are still that sensitive, don't talk about press freedom or democracy," he said.

Ashadi similarly commented on the declining level of tolerance against the press. "The political room to maneuver provided by the state bureaucracy is shrinking...People get offended very easily," he remarked. (mds)