PRESIDENT REFUTES POPULAR BELIEF HE BROUGHT NATURAL DISASTERS

Jakarta, Aug 8 (ANTARA) - President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said he needed to refute the belief sometimes emerging among the people that his administration had brought frequent natural disasters to the country.
He admitted that during his tenure as president, Indonesia was often hit by natural disasters such as floods, landslides, and earthquakes. But these calamities had nothing to do with his accession to the presidency, he said.
Speaking at a function to mark the 13th National Technology Awakening Day (Harketnas) at the State Palace here on Friday, the president said he had heard there was a popular saying associating him with natural disasters.
The saying ran something like "whenever SBY comes, there will be an earthquake," Yudhoyono said with a smile.
The president then asked Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro why earthquakes often happened in Indonesia.
The minister then explained that Indonesia is located in the Pacific "Ring of Fire" and therefore it is prone to earthquakes.
Yudhoyono added that Indo-Australia and Eurasia plates meet in in the Indonesian region and therefore earthquakes had happened in Indonesia over the past 200 million years.
"So earthquakes have also happened frequently long before SBY was born," Yudhoyono said.
The President called on the Indonesian people to think rationally and to discard superstitious ways of thinking which could easily lead people to speak ill of others unjustly.
He said there was no place for slander and superstition in a technologically-advanced country where sound and logical thinking prevailed.