Farouk Arnaz & Ezra Sihite – The fallout from a violent protests against gold prospecting activities in Bima, West Nusa Tenggara, has spread to the country's corridors of power, pitting top officials from the two biggest political parties against each other.
On Tuesday, Golkar Party chairman Aburizal Bakrie filed a police report against Ramadhan Pohan, the deputy secretary general of the ruling Democratic Party, for defamation after the latter claimed that the prospecting company at the heart of the dispute was linked to Aburizal.
Lalu Mara Satria Wangsa, a spokesman for Aburizal and the Golkar deputy secretary general, said the claim was a political attack against the Golkar chairman, who is considered highly likely to stand for president in the 2014 elections.
"These allegations cannot be separated from politics because Ramadhan is the Democrat deputy secretary general," Lalu said. "As a former journalist, Ramadhan should have known better than to say that."
The spat arises from remarks made by Ramadhan to the Jawa Pos News Network on Jan. 6, in which he linked Aburizal to Sumber Mineral Nusantara, the mining firm whose exploration activities in Bima sparked massive protests by locals and led to the torching of the district chief's office.
"SMN serves as an ATM for Aburizal and his cronies, via the Bima district head," he said. "Not for the Golkar Party, though, because not everyone in Golkar likes Aburizal."
Lalu said Aburizal had denied any links to the company. He also said that in the wake of the claims, he had received several text messages from anti-mining activists threatening a sit-in of Wisma Bakrie, the tycoon's high-rise headquarters in Jakarta.
"There were also leaflets circulated at a [recent] demonstration outside the State Palace alleging Aburizal's links to the Bima case. This is not right and is detrimental [to Aburizal]," Lalu said.
"We've subpoenaed Ramadhan and gave him until this morning [to retract his statement] but there have been no signs of an apology. I was asked by the joint coalition secretariat to settle this matter [without taking it to the police], but it can't be done."
Rudy Alfonso, one of Aburizal's team of 12 lawyers, said Ramadhan had challenged them to report him to the police, saying he was not afraid of being jailed. Rudy also presented a copy of SMN's shareholder list, which showed the company under full ownership of the Tahija family.
Ramadhan said he had offered a conditional apology to Aburizal – but not for the allegations. "He's older than I am, so I apologize if I offended his feelings," he said. "But as a politician, I am beholden to the people, and it was the people's voice that I was representing, so I won't apologize for that."
He also rebuffed the threat of defamation charges, suggesting that Aburizal was punching far below his own weight class in filing a report against him.
"He's a prominent figurehead, a presidential candidate, so he should be taking on other presidential candidates, not me," Ramadhan said. "Again, if he's offended by my remarks, I apologize for that, but I'm not going to take back what I said."