1. PUPUD -- 1 x 35

1. PUPUD -- 1 x 35

Pupud Saripudin, a dedicated driver

Urip Hudiono The Jakarta Post Jakarta

Becoming part of the intensely discussed busway project is more than just a question of pride or making a better livelihood for a bus driver like Pupud Saripudin.

It is a chance to show the public that a bus driver too understands what that sacred word professionalism means -- a conviction born out of his concern about the widespread impression that Jakarta's bus drivers are reckless and lawless.

"I want to show the public that bus drivers can also drive with a high level of discipline and expertise, while providing premium service as well to their passengers," said 42-year-old Pupud recently, prior to the launch of the TransJakarta Busway on Thursday.

For sure Pupud's remark will come as a relief for those who are concerned about the city's poor public transportation service for it does not come from a smooth-talking politician but it comes from someone who has in fact spent more than a decade plying Jakarta's streets.

Pupud, the father of three children, has not a single traffic violation on his record.

Pupud was one of the 100 bus drivers who was nominated for the city's best bus driver award last year and the only one from his Steady Safe bus company, making him his company's number one candidate to be trained as a busway bus driver. He later joined the training at the National Police Traffic Training Center in Serpong, Tangerang, with 115 other drivers for the busway project.

"I feel honored, and will try to do my best," he said, as he buckled up before adeptly test-driving one of the buses around the training center.

Born in Cimahi, West Java, Pupud said that he had little choice, anyway, than to strive to be the best he could.

"All I am skilled in is driving buses, and maybe a little bit of engine tinkering. So I might as well give my whole soul to it," he said.

Like so many other urban migrants coming from small towns to the big city to try their luck, Pupud came to Jakarta in 1979 to look for work to put himself through school.

"Since I couldn't afford to pay my senior technical vocational school (STM) fees, I decided to go find work in Jakarta rather than burden my parents," he said.

Arriving at the capital, Pupud was lucky enough to get a job as a mechanic at an auto repair shop through some of his hometown friends.

"It was an auto repair shop for those American jeeps. You know, those Willys jeeps," he said, adding that it was there that he first learned how to drive.

Pupud's driving experience broadened when his employer asked him to drive delivery trucks for a chemical plant, as well as occasionally drive buses for his family outings.

In 1985, Pupud's employer gave him a reference to work with Big Bird, Blue Bird Group's chartered bus division, before he finally joined Steady Safe buses in 1993.

Pupud worked for 10 years at Steady Safe; seven years serving the Lebak Bulus-Senen route, before the route was expanded to Depok-Kota by his company three years ago.

In September 2003, it turned out that his driving was being discreetly monitored by officers from the Jakarta Transportation Agency and the Jakarta Police traffic division.

"I didn't know I was being monitored. I only knew when my company notified me that I was summoned by the transportation agency but I didn't know what I was being summoned for," he recalled.

Two weeks of extensive training on traffic regulations, driving skills and etiquette in October 2003 was what the transportation agency summoned Pupud for, as they had chosen him as a model bus driver.

"It was similar to training I received at the training center in Serpong back in 1995. And afterwards, we received the honor of being accepted by the governor at City Hall, and were then awarded as the city's best bus drivers for 2003," Pupud said.

But he did not become complacent after receiving the award, as he now felt that he had an even greater responsibility of upholding his professionalism as a bus driver.

"I would feel so humiliated now if I was honked at by other motorists or if passengers complained about my driving," he said.

Pupud has also become more critical since he received his training, particularly about certain traffic regulations where he has direct knowledge and experience as a public transportation bus driver.

"If the government wants bus drivers and passengers to comply with Law No.14/1992 on highway traffic that requires all buses to stop only at shelters, then they have to make sure the shelters are built at convenient locations," he said.

Meanwhile, concerning the busway project itself, Puput expressed hope that the public support it, though he also understood the criticism toward it.

"Please give us a chance to show that we can be good drivers," he said, as he stepped out of the busway bus he just test drove.

Residing in a modest house in Bekasi, Pupud admits that he has high hopes that the prestigious project can also improve his welfare.

While one should of course keep an eye out for any emerging flaws of the project, one should also think again before merely canning it without cause, as many ordinary, or "little people" -- are pinning their hopes on it.

And the dedicated bus driver Pupud Saripudin, is but one of those "little people".

2. MAO -- 1 x 45

Mao's grandson a big chip off the old block

Jonathan Ansfield Reuters Beijing

Mao Xinyu seldom calls him grandpa any more.

He usually refers to his illustrious forebear as Chairman Mao, or simply Chairman, reserving the full name of China's once- deified leader for when he cites his political canon.

"In this new century, this new period of history, to publicise Mao Zedong's thought, to carry forward Chairman Mao's glorious image, this work is even more important than before," he says, intoning a well-rehearsed sermon.

More than a quarter-century after his death in 1976, Mao's continuing status as a global pop icon contrasts with the increasingly acknowledged bankruptcy of his politics, a pretext for all kinds of irony.

The burden of reconciling China's past and present has been thrust on the distended frame of his grandson, who is said to have grown up sheltered by servants and guards, kidding classmates about what he'd do when he took power.

In a generation of "little emperors", he appeared to fit the mould better than any, logging mediocre test scores and tipping the scales at more than 250 lbs (114 kg).

Today, as an army-trained Mao historian and lieutenant colonel, Xinyu, 33, remains a ceremonial figure. But while he has slimmed little, he has matured a good deal.

Sitting back in a voluminous green uniform, swearing to uphold Mao's guerrilla gospel, he faintly resembles his grandfather -- part country bumpkin, part quixotic bookworm, part sprawled-out sovereign.

"Aya, there's pressure, there's pressure," he sighed, with a puffy-cheeked grin, at the end of an interview. "Because the whole nation's people have their eyes on me."

Moments after Xinyu left, one of his publicity aides at the Academy of Military Sciences explained that "pressure" was meant to convey filial respect, all the more so for an ancestor of his grandfather's stature.

Mao's 110th birthday, Dec. 26, came and went last month, making no great waves in Chinese public life.

The Communist Party aired the usual television hagiographies while capitalistic co-sponsors peddled the latest gimmicks, from books spinning Mao's wartime survival tactics into management tips to hip-hop music recordings of his trademark theories.

Xinyu, for his part, did a rare run of interviews and book signings to promote his new anecdotal history, Grandpa Mao Zedong.

The paperback has sold several tens of thousands of copies, the Ph.D. replied modestly when asked. Later he suggested, "I'll give you the rights. You can translate it!"

The Great Helmsman named him Xinyu, or "new universe". His father, Mao Anqing, the chairman's second son, was a party interpreter before succumbing to schizophrenia; his mother Shao Hua, an esteemed photojournalist, is a major-general. His wife is also in the army.

In China's elite circles today, many so-called princelings milk their pedigree to find jobs in prize industries, from real estate (party boss Hu Jintao's daughter) to semi-conductors (military chief Jiang Zemin's son). Some hold official posts themselves.

For Mao's heirs, the chambers of party power were seemingly off limits, the boardrooms of business sure to incur scandal. So the family -- said to suffer from bad genes and be subject to bad grudges by elites rehabilitated after the Chairman's 1966-76 Cultural Revolution -- came to depend on the military.

Xinyu insists his clan simply have their own special calling, to act as "successors" to Mao's revolutionary work.

"As the Chairman's relatives, we must take heed to serve the people at every turn," he said.

As for those counter-revolutionaries who exploit Mao's image for personal gain, with kitsch cigarette lighters and so on, he has a rosy-red outlook: "If you ask to me look at these phenomena and what they relate to, I believe China's common people want to have beliefs and spiritual sustenance."

"Since the 100th anniversary especially, I feel that common Chinese people's spiritual beliefs and spiritual sustenance have been embodied in Chairman Mao."

That was less than apparent in the capital on Mao's 110th birthday. While many stopped to snap souvenir photos before the Tiananmen rostrum, where Mao proclaimed the People's Republic in 1949 and where his portrait still keeps watch, perhaps as many lined up outside department stores for shots with Santa Claus.

Xinyu said that one reason he wrote his book was to dispel certain Mao "myths", although he declined to cite examples. The authorities have banned some books over the years, such as physician Li Zhisui's notorious portrayal of Mao as a randy megalomaniac. Even a sanctioned new memoir by another doctor, Wang Hebin, devotes pages to Mao's pet phrase fang pi -- to "pass gas".

There are no "fang pi" tales from his grandson, who said his clearest memory was of the day Mao died. Xinyu writes that the radical thinker also took frugality to an extreme, preferring to wear pajamas patched in 67 places rather than replace them.

As with many Chinese biographies of the late Chairman, 90 percent of Xinyu's volume focuses on the pre-1949 Mao, credited with emancipating the masses after millennia of feudalism. The Mao blamed for 30-50 million deaths from famine during the Great Leap Forward and millions more in the Cultural Revolution goes unmentioned.

But even this self-styled Mao disciple bows to the accepted verdict in China: Mao made mistakes, but his contributions exceeded them.

"He was mainly exploring how to build China's socialist road," Xinyu said. "In this exploration, it was hard to avoid mistakes." The party Mao helped found has spent most of the time since his death trying to unravel his radical collectivist policies, the latest step a constitutional amendment moderately strengthening private property rights.

Would Mao have approved? His grandson, echoing the party's official rationale, said Mao always envisaged the need for a private sector to forge conditions for socialism.

"So in relation to multiple economic components, this big issue, I think Chairman Mao would not be opposed to it." Thus the heir, who writes of his grandfather as "the spine of the Chinese people", declares his unswerving faith that the present times are an extension of Mao's own.

"The current state of the country, that it could develop his work and his thought, I think he would be happy about." Mao would undoubtedly be amused by his progeny's efforts to augment his legend. On Mao's birthday, Dec. 26, Mao Xinyu's wife gave birth to the chairman's first great-grandson.

"The name is not decided," said the blushing father. "But his nickname is Dongdong."

REUTERS

GetRTR 3.00 -- JAN 14, 2004 08:39:50