NY Times - July 12, 2003

By JANE PERLEZ

JAKARTA, Indonesia - In the boldest traditions of tabloid newspapers, Mr. Supratman, the editor of one of this nation's raciest papers, is not afraid of outrageous headlines sprawled across the front page in mile-high type. He has been writing them for three years with a punch that makes the poor of this frenetic city smile, and politicians shudder.

Now the president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, has taken him to court in a defamation case under a criminal law that dates from colonial days. He faces a possible sentence of six years in jail for writing four headlines that the president contends were humiliating.

Still, Mr. Supratman - friends say that he is entitled to have a name that may be confused with Superman - insists on having the freshest news, and the zaniest headlines. He has taken the charges with the kind of equanimity that allows him to choose the lead story just minutes before an 11 p.m. deadline for the next morning's issue of Rakyat Merdeka. The name, splashed in a scarlet banner, means People Freedom.

"By journalistic standards we have done nothing wrong," he said in the slick new newsroom where he commands a computer on a circular desk crammed with the work spaces of half a dozen journalists. "The headlines reflect what was said by the student demonstrators."

The headlines, written at the height of protests against the government's plans to raise fuel prices earlier this year, could hardly be more provocative, and, some would argue, offensive. One said "Mega's Mouth Reeks of Fuel Oil." The fact that she and her husband, Taufiq Kiemas, owned gas stations gave the words a deeper current. Another likened her to a "leech" and was accompanied by a photograph of two demonstrators who had made up their faces to resemble monkeys.

A third headline compared her unfavorably to a cannibal from the island of Java who had recently been in the news. A fourth, alluding to Mrs. Megawati's decision to go to her home in Bali rather than visit earthquake victims, called her a "regent," which in local parlance means someone who refuses to mix with the people.

"The Megawati government, when it sees those headlines, might be tempted to be angry, but a newspaper is a recorder of what is happening," said Mr. Supratman, who is 34, but with his measured way of speaking could be some years older. "The atmosphere at the time was very, very similar to what we put in the headlines. If we put those headlines today it would not be contextual. A newspaper is a daily reflection of life."

Under Mr. Supratman, who like many Indonesians uses one name, Rakyat Merdeka, with a circulation of about 300,000, has achieved a reputation as the rag that intellectuals love to hate. The case against him has nonetheless stirred concern even among people who are often irritated by his paper's style.

The case is one of a sudden burst of libel suits and restrictions against Indonesia's freewheeling media. Many fear that it may herald a halt to the recent splurge of free expression in Indonesia that followed the end of 30 years of authoritarian rule.

Just before Mr. Supratman was charged, Mrs. Megawati delivered a speech - she does not give interviews - in which she complained about certain "unpatriotic" news media. Not long after, a summons was delivered to Mr. Supratman's desk by a courier. The police then questioned him. "They were very polite, very cooperative," Mr. Supratman said of his interrogators. Did they secretly agree with him? "I hope so," he said with a chuckle.

Beneath the quiet confidence, however, Mr. Supratman is clearly worried about the outcome. He has confided to colleagues his concerns about being locked up; Indonesia has a terrible history of cruel treatment of prisoners. He said he and his wife had decided to delay having a second child until they knew the outcome of the trial, which is now progressing at a pace of a hearing a week.

The newspaper group that owns Rakyat Merdeka, too, is taking no chances. Once it became clear that Mrs. Megawati was serious, it hired one of the nation's most expensive defense lawyers to defend the editor.

At heart Mr. Supratman is a crusader for the underdog. He likes articles to be easy to read, short, and directly from the source. There are barely any telephones in the newsroom. "We don't respect reporters contacting a source by phone," he said. "The reporter has to be a hunter in the field."

Reporters say he strolls the newsroom, looking over their shoulders and saying, "If you write like that you can go to Kompas," the serious morning newspaper known for its turgid style. "Make it easy," he says. "This is for the becak drivers," a reference to the men who pedal Jakarta's three-wheeled rickshaws.

For the editor of a tabloid-style newspaper, and for a man who came from a working-class background where books and discussion were rare at home, Mr. Supratman has long been deeply interested in politics. After attending high school on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, east of Bali, he went to university in Surabaya, a tough trading city on the eastern edge of Java. There, he majored in politics and international affairs.

He recalls a favorite professor, Ramlan Surbakti, now an official on the national elections board, nudging his students to think about transparency in government. It was a time of authoritarian rule, and the United States ambassador to Indonesia was Paul D. Wolfowitz, now the deputy secretary of defense.

"I remember Wolfowitz made a statement that Indonesia had to be open, and democracy had to be introduced," he recalled. The professor used the ambassador's statement as an exam question and asked students to analyze it, Mr. Supratman said. What was his answer? "That it was an excellent theme by Wolfowitz and should be considered by the government."

At first, Mr. Supratman was delighted that Mrs. Megawati, the daughter of Indonesia's founding president, Sukarno, came to power. She held the promise of everything he wanted: someone who would fight against corruption and perhaps even be a visionary for the people.

It has not turned out that way, and Mr. Supratman appears to be vaguely amused that he is now being prosecuted for pointing out her shortcomings under a law that got Mrs. Megawati's father in trouble more than 70 years ago. Then, Mr. Sukarno was a young nationalist who was convicted by the Dutch in 1931, he said, under a similar paragraph of the criminal code.

But the editor seems undeterred. The headline of a recent morning was about university students protesting the army's new offensive in the northern province of Aceh, over a photograph of demonstrators carrying a mock coffin for Mrs. Megawati.

Most other newspapers led with the army's assessment of its progress in the war. Days later, in a salacious take on the latest scandal involving the government's purchase of Russian fighter jets, he chose a front-page cartoon of corrupt Indonesian politicians entertaining Russian bar girls.

"Every day we have to present new attractive things," he said. "If in three or four days we present just common articles, the newspaper will be bankrupt."