Economic, political reforms must empower people: NGOs

JAKARTA (JP): Three rural-based non-governmental organizations are calling for economic and political reforms that will empower people.

Activists of the Bandung-based Akatiga and Jakarta-based Bina Desa and LPIST said that attention should be paid to the effect of the monetary crisis on common people and small-scale entrepreneurs.

In a joint statement discussed here yesterday, the activists said the country had all these years been dragging its feet over calls for reform while the people became powerless.

"It's because the country's development has been (conducted in ways which showed that it was) uprooted from its social basis, namely the agricultural sector and villages (development)," they said in their 15-page paper.

"The paradigm and strategy of development should go back to its roots," said the NGOs, adding that the economic crisis and degradation of living standards was proof of the early failure of development.

"We need... reforms (which) are based on a paradigm that will empower people," the activists said.

The NGOs -- respectively represented by their chairman Juni Thamrin of Akatiga, Syaiful Bahari of Bina Desa, and Ayik Bunyamin of LPIST -- laid out at least 14 points of economic reform and five of political reform needed in the country.

The NGOs called, for instance, for a stop to nepotism and monopoly. "An antimonopoly law must be drafted soon," they said in the discussion attended by about 60 NGO activists and intellectuals.

The NGOs said "a development strategy that has given only a certain group the chance to flourish" must end, and that an equal chance should be offered to any capable parties in a competitive and clean manner.

They also called for economic reform that would prioritize small and medium-scale businesses, arguing that the people's economy was the nation's main pillar.

"The external-driven economic crisis would not have affected (Indonesia badly) had our people's economic basis been strong," they argued.

Hundreds of tempe (fermented soybean cake) makers in Lampung in Sumatra, Sumedang and Cibatu in West Java, for instance, had to reduce their production capacity due to the monetary crisis.

"It's because the price of the industry's raw material, soybean, which must be imported, has risen between 26 percent and 35 percent," they said. (aan)