Economic, political reforms must empower people: NGOs
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)