Controlling land use

Controlling land use

President Soeharto's call for stricter control of the use and ownership of land is nothing new. Officials, from the President down to local administrators, have made such calls on many occasions in the past.

However, the President's strong comments, reported yesterday, seem to indicate that things must have gone too far, or that perhaps the problem has become a serious threat to our national development efforts. Why else would the President issue such stern warnings?

That the situation is serious and that it warrants our greatest attention can be understood by anyone who has been reading the newspapers. For the last several years practically no day has passed without one report or another appearing in our newspapers on land disputes. Those cases range from the public's reactions to appropriation plans to villagers demonstrating against forcible eviction from their land.

Nobody has the right to own or control excessive amounts of land, the President said just the other day. True enough. But the reality is, as one can easily see or read in news reports, that certain people own hundreds of hectares of land, seemingly without any fear of being reprimanded by the authorities.

The President said further that the government must plan things in such a way that all land is used for the welfare of the entire populace.

There is probably not a soul who would refuse to fully support President Soeharto's stance. In fact, our Constitution and the Basic Agrarian Law stipulate these principles clearly.

The problem, however, is that our capability to enforce such moral and legal principles is often quite poor. And to judge by the worsening land use and ownership situation in this country, it is apparent that for some time now we have been suffering from a lack of genuine will to tackle this problem seriously and with sincerity.

In the last two decades, since the market economy has become so dominant in our lives, an apparently unrestrained market- oriented way of thinking seems to have gradually taken hold of many of us. Greed and profit making have turned many of us into economic animals, whose sole purpose is to accumulate wealth with total disregard for existing laws and moral values.

The result of the gradual, almost unnoticed changes, which our value system has undergone is easily seen in society. Officials who stay poor because they prefer to be led by moral principles and remain incorruptible are considered stupid. In fact, their behavior is regarded as downright aberrant. Petty corruption is considered a matter of course.

Thus, if President Soeharto's call for stricter control of land use can be interpreted as a renewed political will -- and as an official instruction -- to clean up the mess, the only sensible thing one can do is to welcome it.

Still, considering the experience gained in past years, one could surely be excused for taking a wait-and-see attitude. It just seems natural to want to see how things are going to be handled.

In any case we do believe that President Soeharto's call is timely. We believe it is not exaggerating to say that without proper correction, the greed and the decline in ethics that has come to pollute the minds of many of us could lead our nation to the brink of collapse.

It is the duty of all of us to safeguard not only our national development efforts, but also of our national self respect from the danger of such moral bankruptcy.