Wolfowitz is right

Since I don’t often agree with Paul Wolfowitz, it’s worth mentioning it when I do, particularly when he comments on an issue close to home. His opinion piece in todays NYT denounces the bringing of criminal defamation charges against the editor of leading Indonesian magazine Tempo for a piece criticising a powerful businessman[1].

Here’s a story in the Australian which makes it clear that the businessman in question is of the class who would be described, here in Australia, as colourful.

Most Australians were disappointed when the Indonesian Supreme Court overturned the conviction of one of the Bali bombers on the grounds that the retrospective laws under which he was charged were invalid. (Hopefully, he can be retried and convicted under ordinary criminal law.) But cases like that of Tempo remind us that the rule of law is an invaluable social good and should not be tampered with even for worthy ends. I hope, as indicated in the Oz report, that the courts will throw this case in the dustbin where it belongs.

It also worth emphasising that, despite incidents like this, and the Jakarta bombing that the general trend of events in Indonesia is remarkably favorable. Elections are going smoothly the intercommunal religious strife that threatened to destroy the country a couple of years ago has pretty much ceased and the military is being eased out of politics (the likely winner of the presidential election is a former general, but the real military candidate, Wiranto, ran a poor third in the first round of voting).

fn1. Australian readers will remember similar charges being brought against Communist writer Frank Hardy for his thinly-disguised portrayal of John Wren in Power without Glory. The book was certainly defamatory and many of the claims in it undoubtedly false, but the prosecution failed and rightly so. This should have been a civil action.