Former President Suharto has just won a RP 1 trillion (that’s with a ‘T’… US$106 million!) suit against TIME magazine for defaming his good name :)
TIME ran a cover story back in 1999 exposing Suharto Inc. and in it, alleged that the former dictator and his (extremely fortunate!) children amassed more than US$73 billion in his years in office, lost most of it during 97’s financial crisis, but was still comfortably sitting on ohh just about, US$15 billion in 1999.
Now there’s no way that can be true…
That’s apparently what the Indonesian Supreme Court thought and so, here we are, almost ten years after Reformasi, and still the man many believe to be the most corrupt politician of the twentieth century walks away smiling.
You know what’s interesting though? Suharto had earlier filed lawsuits with the Central District Jakarta Court and then the Jakarta High Court. Both courts ruled in TIME’s favour. When the case reached the Supreme Court however, which was presided over by a panel of three judges, (one of whom, Jakarta Post reports, is a retired general who rose in the military ranks during Suharto’s administration) it overturned the decision and ordered the mag to pay up.
It kinda sucks for TIME but I’m sure they can afford it. It is quite funny though, that they’re gonna have to take out full page public apologies in the press to the former Prez.
So yes, poor TIME. But poorer still, is press freedom in the infant democracy that is Indonesia. I know it sounds like the pot calling the kettle black but trust this Singaporean, it takes one to know one.
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