Arrested for Complaining against Hospital

Prita Mulyasari (32), mother of two children below 5 years old, has been detained by the Tangerang District Attorney in the Tangerang Women's Penitentiary since 13 May 2009 (Photo:Facebook).

According to the Tempo newspaper, Prita was detained because she has complained, through a mailing list, about the bad medical treatments that she experienced at the OMNI International Hospital in Alam Sutera, Tangerang. Her e-mail then spreaded to many places including the Reader's Letters Collumn of Detik. Due to which fact, the hospital reported Prita to the Police who charged her with committing Slander based on the Information and Electronic Transaction Law No. 11 Year 2008 (ITE), Article 27 Par. 3, which carries a maximum penalty of 6 years imprisonment or a maximum Fine of Rp 1 Billion.
In this regards, a member of the District Attorney said that his office received the case Reg.no. 55-1/2009 from the Jakarta Police on 25 May 2009.

Beside the above criminal charges, Prita is also facing Civil Lawsuit initiated by the hospital with the District Court of Tangerang under Reg.no : 300/PDG/ 6/2008. Although a verdict has been passed, but the Head of the District Court refused to give explaination saying that both disputing parties have submitted appeals with the High Court on 25 May 2009. He added that the Criminal Case shall began within this week.

The above case shows that conveying messages through the internet can be so risky, therefore one should be careful so as not to annoy other people.
However, I hope that the implementation of the ITE Law in this case would consider Prita's specific condition, e.g she is a mother of two very small children, almost impossible for her to run away or obstruct the investigation, therefore it is not necessary to detain her any longer.

Election Violations

Since our country held its Parliamentary Election on Thursday, 9 April, our news media have been reporting about violation complaints voiced by political parties competing in the said election.

Based on the General Election Law No. 10 Year 2008 Art. 247 Par.4, such kind of complaints should be submitted by those political parties to the General Election Supervision Board (Bawaslu) within three days after the said election date i.e. on Saturday 11 April at midnight (24.00 hours).

According to VivaNews, until 11.40 pm last night, Bawaslu has received at least 549 complaints consisting of 363 Administrative Violations, 75 Criminal Violations, and 111 Miscellaneous Violations. And Lampung is the province with the biggest number of violations i.e. 112 cases.

Further TVOne quoted Wahidah Suaib of Bawaslu as saying that the Administrative Violations consists of among others: Misplacement of Ballots, Voter not registered in the Permanent Voters List (DPT), Unannounced DPT, Ballot’s seal broken. Criminal Violation: Money Politic, Voter cast the ballot more than one time. While Miscellaneous Violation: Chaos or act of Anarchy.
Based on Art. 257 of the General Election Law, Court Verdicts for the Criminal Violation should be passed not less than 5 days before the General Election Commission (KPU) announced the final result of election on 9 May.

According to Kompas, the Head of Bawaslu i.e. Nurhidayat Sardini promised to take immediate action to respond and take legal actions on all complaints received by Bawaslu.

I hope that Bawaslu will settle all the complaints on time i.e. not less than 5 days before KPU make the announcement regarding the final result of Parliamentary Election, so that the KPU will be able to make proper preparations for the Presidential Election on 8 July 2009. That way, KPU would be able to prevent or at least minimized the negative things that happened in the Parliamentary Election.