Supreme Court under fire over 'Tempo' verdict

JAKARTA (JP): Observers suspect that "political games" were behind the Supreme Court's decision to overturn yesterday a decision by the High Court allowing Indonesia's oldest magazine, Tempo, to resume publication after being banned by the government in 1994.

M. Budhyatna, dean of University of Indonesia's School of Social and Political Sciences, charged that the Supreme Court had not acted independently when making the decision. Instead, the Court had made the decision to please some elements in the political elite, he said.

"There must have been a political game behind the Supreme Court's verdict, some sort of an effort by the government to keep from losing a face," he told The Jakarta Post.

Chief Justice Soerjono announced yesterday that the Minister of Information's decision to annul the publishing license of Tempo in 1994 was not against the law. This verdict thus overturned the decision by the Jakarta Administrative High Court, which had allowed the magazine to resume publication.

The lawsuit against the minister's decree was filed by former Tempo employees. "There are enough reasons to grant the appeal by the information minister and overturn the decision by the Jakarta Administrative High Court," Soerjono said.

When it closed down the publication, the Ministry of Information said the magazine's proprietor repeatedly ignored warnings from the government about its editorial content.

Budhyatna charged that the Supreme Court might have taken the decision in order to please some elements in the political elite who were infuriated by the magazine's bold reporting.

"It's the political elite group who wanted to have Tempo closed down, on the pretext that it had disrupted national stability and unity with its editorial content," Budhyatna said.

Budhyatna, however, said he was not surprised over the defeat Tempo suffered. "There haven't been any records in Indonesian history of the government being defeated in court," he said.

Andi Muis, a professor of law at Hasanuddin University in Ujungpandang, South Sulawesi, expressed a similar suspicion. He told the Post that there must have been "non-legal factors" influencing the Court.

He said that the government might have feared it would lose face if Tempo's employees won the lawsuit. "The government was probably afraid that it would lose its credibility by accepting defeat," he said.

Andi expressed his concern over the ruling. "I'm afraid the verdict will encourage the government to tighten control over and pressure the press," he said.

The chairman of the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute Foundation, Bambang Widjojanto, said the verdict reflected a failure on the part of the government to protect people's rights to express their opinions through the mass media.

"The verdict is a negation of people's rights, something which is guaranteed by the Constitution," Bambang said in a press statement.

Bambang also accused the Supreme Court of endorsing the government in abusing its power. "The Court has set a bad milestone in Indonesia's legal history," he said.

Meanwhile, an unrecognized association of journalists established by former reporters and supporters of Tempo following its closure also criticized the Supreme Court.

Satrio Arismunandar, secretary-general of the Alliance of Independent Journalists, said the credibility of the Court, as the highest legal authority in the country, should now be questioned.

"The Supreme Court has failed to prove that it's an independent legal institution," he said.

Bambang also questioned yesterday some technicalities in the verdict. For instance, he said, the judges have failed to define what they meant by "disturbing national stability".

"I failed to find arguments supporting the judges' statement that the magazine's content disturbed national stability," he said. (imn/16/20)