Golkar Party thinks mudflow disaster a dream comes true for tourism

A Golkar Party senior politician regards President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's idea of making Porong in Sidoarjo, East Java, the area devastated by a continuous mudflow, a tourist attraction as brilliant.

“We can finally show the world that a scary area can be utilized as a beautiful area for tourism,” Golkar's Priyo Budi Santoso told reporters at the House of Representatives in Jakarta on Tuesday.

Priyo said Lapindo, a company affiliated with Golkar chairman Aburizal Bakrie, would do its best to make the dream of making the area into a tourism site come true.

The mudflow started in May 2006, at a time when Lapindo Brantas was running an exploratory drilling program and was drilling in the area.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Lapindo in a legal dispute over the way the company handled the mudflow victims.

In 2008, the government declared the mudflow a “natural disaster”, which saw 40,000 people displaced from their homes..

Many scientists, however, believe the mudflow was no natural disaster and consider it a massive natural accident caused by human intervention.