Government vs the House

Government vs the House

Since 1989, with the exception of a few intervals, my husband
and I have had the privilege of living in Indonesia. During these
years, The Jakarta Post has been our daily reading. We have
enjoyed and appreciated the constant search for objectivity shown
by your newspaper during very difficult times for the Indonesian
press.

However, since almost one year we are observing an
increasingly evident attitude of the Post in using ambiguity as
far as Indonesian internal politics is concerned. In relation to
this, we have noticed a biased hostility towards President
Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid, as appears mainly through titles and
arguments chosen in your newspaper's political pages, although
the contents of the articles, which so often clash with the
meaning of the respective titles, tend still to keep an objective
stance.

Nevertheless, the insistence in reporting diffusely on
"objective" rumors and gossip instead of more objectively
significant facts, and to elaborate editorial comments on the
basis of clearly tendentious interpretations of such rumors and
gossip, provides the attentive reader with a disappointing image
of the newspaper she/he was used to consider a very good example
of journalism. The editorial of May 21 When enough is enough, is
a bitter confirmation of how judgment can be released and
propagated on the basis of a quite tendentious and prejudicial
interpretation of the alleged intention ascribed to a person,
whose image has to be damaged for political purposes.

We regret this change in the habits of the Post.

So far, we have not been able to detect any objective analysis
in your newspaper concerning this matter and the tremendous
loneliness in which any honest and courageous head of government
would have found himself in fighting against the almost
invincible resistance of the past era, which is really reluctant
to pass away. The previous administrative apparatus, men, habits,
mentality, aims, are still there, to perpetuate a system created
for its primary benefit.

Apart from the members of Megawati's party, the House of
Representatives is still substantially formed by people who
served the previous regime in one way or another. If this
legislative body, instead of focusing on the promotion of new
laws and legislative measures as a priority task to recover from
the crisis, concentrates almost all of its energies on finding a
way to expunge the President from the role that the same
legislature assigned to him, the easiest interpretation for
people who know Indonesia is that the man being expunged from
such a key role cannot be digested by the system, which tries to
self-perpetuate by any means.

When one notices the new propensity to process rumors, gossip
and hypotheses, it seems surprising that the Post has made no
attempt to go behind the rather ridiculous accusation of
corruption moved against Gus Dur. The current campaign, promoted
daily by the House of Representatives against Gus Dur, looks much
more like an attempt to prepare a coup d'etat rather than the
willingness to assert democratic principles.

The only reasonable and just alternative to the grotesque
situation created by a mass of hyperactive politicians quite
unfamiliar with democracy, seems to be that the government and
the House cooperate in efforts for the good of the people.

There is little to hope for, however, for the objective of
striving for the people's good doesn't seem anywhere to be seen.

KRYSTYNA KLEMCZAK

Jakarta