Economist vs entrepreneur

An attractively packaged TV program on the TPI station, Who wants to be the President? has been broadcast every Monday for the past three months, starting at 9 p.m. with a running time of one hour. To date over 20 contesters with different occupations have appeared.

The usual process of the program is to screen the aspiring president by sounding out his views on the current political, economic and social problems afflicting the nation. This rough test of the contestants political agenda occurs before a bench of three panelists and an audience.

However, starting from July 7, a novel new attraction has emerged in the form of a debate between two of the contestants, who had appeared individually in earlier episodes of the show.

The debaters were a prominent economic scholar from a respected state university in Jakarta and an apparently novice entrepreneur, yet to establish a reputation in his field of expertise.

The entrepreneur proposed that due to the current situation of the country, the post of presidency should be occupied by an entrepreneur. He cited the tremendous success of the city-state, Singapore, in achieving a high level of development as a result of the skillful entrepreneurship of its heads of state.

Knowing that his opponent was a champion of the cooperative movement, he denounced the cooperative's venture as prone to the practice of mismanagement.

On the other side, the scholar (who is also a professor at the state university) dismissed the entrepreneur's argument by citing the success of a cooperative society at Pekalongan, Central Java, in yielding a turnover of 5 billion rupiah in its extensive business activities. He further lamented the actions of the conglomerates responsible for the present dilapidated state of the country.

As the debate wound up the moderator announced the results of phone polls conducted by TPI, in which viewers had rated the contestants, to arrive at the most popular candidate for the make-believe presidency.

The economist received 48 percent, while the entrepreneur got 40 percent of the votes. The remaining 12 percent represented noncommittal voters.

It is only regrettable that from the ranks of the feminine gender no contestant has spoken up for the struggle of women in this country, given that the TPI's'program makes an ideal forum.

S. SUHAEDI, Jakarta