Armed MPs?
Amid reports of a rising trend in armed crime and violence in general, suggestions that members of the House of Representatives be allowed to carry handguns are raising many eyebrows.
That ordinary civilians in this country need better police protection is beyond doubt. Many people believe -- quite reasonably, even if not as yet officially proved -- that the alarming increase in armed crime is linked to the fact that firearms, and handguns in particular, have of late become easy to obtain.
Since shortly after the cataclysmic upheavals of May, 1998, and the string of riots that followed them, many Indonesians have felt unsafe to go onto Jakarta's streets unarmed. Apart from guns, other tools for personal defense, such as tear gas canisters, have appeared on the market.
No ordinary Jakarta citizen has so far known to have used such weapons against muggers or other street thugs, but the relatively easy availability of such arms, whether for purposes of attack or defense, also makes it easy for those with less benign intentions to use them for unlawful purposes. In fact, there is a strong impression that it is social delinquents who benefit the most from the increasingly open circulation of handguns in the market.
Only days ago, Indonesians were shocked to learn of the disclosure by the police of the existence of an illegal arms trading ring involving a number of still-active military personnel selling weapons and ammunition to rebels in the restive province of Aceh. It would be only reasonable to assume that a similar illicit inflow of firearms is keeping troublemakers on the troubled islands of Maluku supplied as well.
On a less dramatic scale, if only in terms of political impact, is the apparent availability of handguns among civilians in this country. In the past several weeks, at least four sensational highway robberies have occurred on toll roads connecting the Indonesian capital with its West Java hinterlands. Police have not been able to clear up even one of those robberies.
Less dramatic, but certainly no less disturbing in terms of the distress they generate among the population, are the armed robberies that occur almost daily on Jakarta's streets. Nowadays, motorists stopping at red lights and railroad crossings pray nothing bad will happen to them while they are waiting for the light to turn green or the train to pass.
The wide availability of weapons of all sorts, plus the increasing proclivity toward violence among certain segments of the community due to the increasing tensions and pressures of life in our big cities, is contributing to the sharp rise of armed crime in this country. That much is well enough realized. But the intensity of the danger of this trend became crystal clear only with the shocking assault over the weekend on one of our most respected politicians.
In what appears to be a failed assassination attempt, two as yet unidentified attackers attacked and wounded on Sunday the chairman of the National Awakening Party (PKB), Matori Abdul Djalil. Police have since admitted they suspect political motives behind the attack.
Unquestionably, the trend towards armed violence in Indonesia is a cause for serious alarm. But allowing even more Indonesians to own and carry guns, even on a selective basis, would tend to aggravate and complicate rather than ease the problem. To better protect the people, not only must the national police force be expanded in terms of numbers of personnel, its professional quality needs to be improved so that it can cope with the challenges it must face.
If under present economic conditions the desired ratio of one police officer to 800 civilians cannot be met, then at least high priority must be given to do whatever can be done. After all, it is hard to see how economic recovery can take place unless security can be assured for all.