Editorial: Mudflow debate

Mon, 06/22/2009 12:39 PM  |  Opinion

The three-year-old mudflow disaster made its way into last week's inaugural presidential debate. It was one of the questions posed to the three presidential candidates but their responses were all disappointing. Given the first chance to speak on the mudflow, Megawati Soekarnoputri talked about the past, referring to what the current government should have done at the time: i.e. evacuate the victims. But, she failed to attack her main rival, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who apparently appeared defensive on this issue.

Yudhoyono said the government, together with the local governments and Lapindo Brantas - the company at the center of the crisis - had done a lot, but he admitted problems remained, and he promised to review the way in which the government was handling the problem.

Speaking last, Jusuf Kalla reminded people of the four basic problems of the mudflow disaster: the source of the mud, its impact on the people, on the environment and on the area's infrastructure. He promised to bring the best technology in the world to stop the mudflow and speed up the reconstruction of the damaged infrastructure.

But all three presidential candidates gave no promises, and did not even discuss how they would help the victims, who are currently facing proliferating problems because Lapindo Brantas has reneged on its earlier promise with regard to the terms to pay the remaining compensation.

In any disaster, the first priority should be to the victims. The problem with the mudflow crisis is that the government from the beginning did not want to help the victims directly. It tasked private company Lapindo Brantas, the company most hated by the victims, to compensate them.

Worse still, Lapindo Brantas was only tasked to compensate victims in four villages, as stipulated in a 2007 presidential decree. In 2008, Yudhoyono issued another decree stating that the government would compensate victims from three more villages.

Meanwhile, the number of victims is increasing day after day as the hot mud keep gushing out and covering a wider and wider area, from four villages to seven and now more than a dozen villages. No one has come forward to help these new victims.

In that sense, Megawati got the point by saying that the government should have evacuated the victims in the beginning. And yet, she did not elaborate on what she would do with the victims. It was a missed opportunity for Megawati in the debate, because she was the only candidate who could speak freely about the mudflow disaster.

Yudhoyono and Kalla are understandably in a more difficult situation. They are in the current government which has failed to handle the problem - the four problems, as outlined by Kalla.

Not only that, they have even failed to pursue the legal process against the perpetrators who caused the mudflow. It is mindboggling that the police have not been able to complete the criminal cases they have been building against several suspects since 2007.

Why the current government failed to solve the mudflow problems is quite obvious. There is a blatant conflict of interest in the whole affair. Lapindo Brantas, which many have blamed for causing the mudflow, is controlled by the family of Aburizal Bakrie, who is also coordinating minister for the people's welfare. No wonder Aburizal never visited Lapindo victims in Sidoarjo.

That is why, for people in Sidoarjo, Megawati and her running mate Prabowo Subianto, certainly look more attractive. But people in Sidoarjo are only a tiny portion of this country's population. And the problem is that the chances of Megawati and Prabowo winning this election, if we believe in the many surveys available, are a bit slim, as compared to incumbent Yudhoyono.

Then, will the people in Sidoarjo, who have been suffering in the past three years, continue to suffer for the next five years?

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