Press council not informed of 'Tempo' closure

Press council not informed of 'Tempo' closure

JAKARTA (JP): The government closed the Tempo weekly in June
without prior consultation with the Press Council as the law
requires, a council member testified in court yesterday.

"I was never informed of the plan to revoke Tempo's publishing
license," Sjamsul Basri, a member of the council's executive
board, said in a hearing, at the Jakarta State Administrative
Court, on two lawsuits against Minister of Information Harmoko's
decision to revoke the magazine's publishing license.

One lawsuit was filed by Goenawan Mohamad, Tempo's former
chief editor, and the other by the magazine's former employees.

"I only found out on the evening of June 21, 1994, that the
magazine had been closed," Sjamsul, who is also chief editor of
the government-run Suara Karya daily, said.

However, he said that the Press Council had previously
suggested that the government take actions against "naughty"
newspapers and magazines. The decision was reached in a council's
executive board meeting on June 14, 1994, and was touched on
again the following week.

"We had proposed to the government to take persuasive measures
against media publications found to have administrative and
editorial faults," he said.

He said the meeting on June 14 observed that there were 12
publications which deserved such actions. The number was then
slashed to three in the meeting on June 21, just hours before the
closures of Tempo, Editor, and DeTik were announced.

He could not answer a question from Trimoelja D. Soerjadi, one
of the employees' lawyers, who asked the reason why the number
was reduced to only three.

Tempo was faulted for its editorial content, while the banning
of Editor and DeTik was attributed to administrative violations.

Currently, Harmoko's decision is being challenged by four
distinct lawsuits from former Tempo editors, employees and
readers. All suits oppose the validity of the minister's
decision to revoke Tempo's license.

Sjamsul told the hearing that the Council's plenary meeting
was only informed of the license revocation five months after
Tempo was closed.

He said that none of the Council's 25 members questioned the
reasons of the revocation to the minister when it was formally
informed in the council's plenary meeting in Kuningan, West Java,
in December.

The court plans to summon council chief Jacob Oetama to
testify in the next session. (imn)