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Campaign Amasses Rp 650m for Prita
Putri Prameshwari | December 23, 2009

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Over 170 sacks of coins donated by sympathizers of Prita Mulyasari to help pay her fine in a civil defamation case were on Wednesday handed over to Bank Indonesia to be counted and exchanged into bank notes.

Organizers of the Coin for Prita Movement had to hire a truck to carry the coins from the movement’s headquarters in South Jakarta to Bank Indonesia headquarters in Central Jakarta.

The organizers said the coins were worth Rp 650 million ($68,250), but Bank Indonesia officials said it would take days before the exact size of the donation would be known.

Once the coins are counted, the money will be deposited into a special account for Prita at Bank Mandiri. Prita said on Wednesday that she did not want the money to be deposited into her existing account to avoid unpleasant rumors.

Prita, was ordered to pay Rp 204 million to Omni International Hospital in Tangerang, Banten, in a civil defamation case after she complained in an e-mail message to friends that her mumps had been misdiagnosed as dengue fever when she was a patient in August 2008. The message was forwarded to others and ended up being widely circulated.

“I will talk about what to do with the money after my trial ends this month,” Prita said, referring to her ongoing criminal trial stemming from the same case.

She added that she wanted to use the money to help people facing similar problems. Prita also handed over a check worth Rp 102 million, donated by former Trade Minister Fahmi Idris, to Budi Sadikin, Bank Mandiri’s director of retail banking.

Slamet Yuwono, Prita’s lawyer, said the Tangerang District Court would issue a verdict on her criminal defamation charge, brought separately by two doctors working for Omni, on Dec. 29. Prosecutors have demanded a six-year jail term for the mother of two under the 2009 Electronic Transaction and Information Law.

“My prediction is that the final verdict [in the civil case] will not be announced within the next five months,” Slamet said, referring to the appeal process now underway. He added that the process had already taken far too long.

Prita, a customer assistant for a bank, spent three weeks in jail despite not being convicted on the criminal charges, and a civil court this month ordered her to pay the hospital the Rp 204 million fine.

Budi Rochadi, deputy governor of Bank Indonesia, told Antara that 15 people had been readied to help count the money, using six machines.

“Even though Thursday is a holiday, they are coming in to count the coins,” Budi was quoted as saying.

A bank officer said that each counting machine had the capacity to count 30,000 coins per hour, meaning it will take two days to count the donated money.