Soerjadi denies deal with attackers

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Democratic Party's (PDI) chairman, Soerjadi, denied yesterday that he had hired people to seize the party's headquarters from supporters of the ousted PDI leader Megawati Soekarnoputri.

"I've met a lot of people in my life. I couldn't be sure whether I had met them in the past," he said. "The plaintiffs' claim is a lie."

Soerjadi was commenting on a Rp 1.2 billion (US$426,000) lawsuit filed by 51 people who claimed they had been hired by Soerjadi to raid the PDI headquarters on July 27 last year. The takeover led to a riot that killed five people, injured more than 100 and left 23 missing.

In the suit filed Monday at the Central Jakarta District Court, the plaintiffs said Soerjadi and his cadres had broken a promise to pay them Rp 200 million in cash after the takeover.

The 51 plaintiffs, who said they were among the 430 people Soerjadi had recruited for the raid, also charged that they had been deceived. They claimed that Soerjadi's cadres had told them that their mission was to reinforce Megawati's loyalists defending the office, not take it over.

Soerjadi dismissed the allegation, saying it was a political maneuver rather than a legal action. "I will let my own lawyers evaluate the lawsuit. And I will sue them back if we have enough evidence to prove that their claim is slander," he said.

He said he was ready to testify or be questioned over the lawsuit.

"In the past, I only had to employ junior lawyers to... defeat all of Megawati's lawsuits," he said.

Soerjadi said there had been no deals to take over the headquarters. "I have once spoken with their (the plaintiff's) leader, Bella, but did not discuss the party headquarters' takeover," he said.

"I have never trusted him, because all the proposals he made to me only concerned money," he said.

Soerjadi said Bella had offered to mobilize about 40,000 people to demonstrate support for him, and that Bella had offered him security for his daughter's wedding ceremony at his home in South Jakarta a month after the takeover.

"I rejected his two offers," he said.

Bella, or Seno Bella Emyus, said in the lawsuit that he had received an Rp 11.5 million advance payment and had been promised the balance after the takeover. "Soerjadi broke his promise," Bella said.

Soerjadi unseated Megawati's leadership of the PDI at a congress in Medan in last June. Megawati and her supporters have declared the congress unconstitutional. (imn)