Ambassadorial candidates

I found your article titled Legislators upset with envoy candidates (The Jakarta Post, Feb. 27, 2003) absolutely misleading and significantly below the standards we had come to expect of your newspaper. Professional newspapers around the world have always based their work on the principles of "accuracy, balance, and clarity" (ABC principles).

Definitely, the article did not meet any of those basic tenets. First, none of the candidates' names quoted in the article were correctly spelled, including my own. Second, the writer appeared only to be seeking sensational news, for he failed to corroborate the information he obtained with the liaison officer from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who was present during the proceedings, thereby violating the balance principle referred to above.

Third, the article also lacked clarity, for it suggested that all 19 of the candidates were of low quality, whereas only nine had been scrutinized by the House of Representatives when the article was first published. And, as a matter of fact, some of the candidates put forward by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs received a positive reaction from the House.

Worse still, in flagrant violation of all diplomatic codes of conduct, the writer also publicly divulged the names of the candidates and countries to which they would be accredited. Neither of these would have augured well with Indonesia's efforts to improve bilateral ties with the countries concerned, nor with the candidates' personal reputations. The article indeed bordered on defamation; hence, an apology is due.

IMRON COTAN, Deputy Head of Mission, Indonesian Embassy, Canberra

Note:Thank you for your comment. We would like to clarify as follows. First, the names of the candidates were obtained from members of the House of Representatives. Second, no official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs could be contacted at that time. Third, if you carefully read the article, it is clearly mentioned that a number of legislators expressed their disappointment with the candidates after the completion of hearings with five of them.

--Editor