State Enterprises Minister Dahlan Iskan has admitted that he broke the law when he took an electric car for a 1,000-kilometer test drive on a public road while using a fake license plate, but says he did it for the sake of science and technology. “I wasn’t using a real license plate. It was an accessory,” Dahlan said at a press conference on Tuesday when asked about the “DI 19” license plate used on the prototype when it crashed into the side of a cliff in East Java after the brakes failed.
“The car didn’t have a license plate. It was an electric car and there was no [roadworthiness] permit [issued for the prototype]. I broke the law in the name of science and I accept whatever consequences arise from this incident,” he said. Dahlan was driving the new electric car, a Tucuxi, from Solo, Central Java, to Surabaya, East Java, on Saturday when it slammed into the side of a cliff and then a utility pole after its brakes failed. During the test drive, Dahlan used the license plate “DI 19.”
The first letters of an Indonesian license plate signify the car’s area of origin, but there is no area with the designation DI. By law, a car must pass rigorous road-worthiness tests before it can be allowed on public roads. The law also requires cars to have registration documents or a test drive permit. “I realize that I have committed a [traffic] violation but it was not a crime,” the minister said. The East Java Police appeared to agree with Dahlan. Indonesian news portal tempo.co quoted provincial police spokesman Sr. Comr. Hilman Thayib as saying that Dahlan “will not be charged.”
He said Dahlan did the right thing by deliberately crashing the prototype vehicle as it was speeding out of control, to avoid hitting other vehicles. “This is just another traffic accident,” Hilman said, adding the minister would only be fined for minor traffic infractions. However, National Mandate Party (PAN) legislator Teguh Juwarno said he believed Dahlan must face criminal charges, arguing that as a senior government official he had set a bad example by deliberately breaking the law.
“This case must be prosecuted by law enforcement officers,” he said. “A statesman [like Dahlan] must abide by the rule of law.” Yogyakarta Police say they are investigating a criminal aspect of the case, but not one that involves Dahlan. Instead police are mulling over charging a roadside vendor, identified only as S., who produced the fake license plate, and the man who commissioned the vendor, an employee of Tucuxi producer Kupu-Kupu Malam auto repair shop identified as K.
“It is clearly a fake, because in [Indonesia] there are no areas represented by the letters DI. The number plate was made on the side of the road in Yogyakarta,” a Yogyakarta Police spokesman said, adding that investigators would question B. Kunto Wibisono, the man responsible for the electrical car project who worked at the Kupu-Kupu Malam garage.
source : the jakarta globe
source : the jakarta globe
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