Govt has lied too much, experts say

Govt has lied too much, experts say

DEPOK, West Java (JP): Local and international market
confidence in Indonesia crumbled because the government lied too
much, experts concluded yesterday.

Social psychologists Sarlito Wirawan Sarwono and Acuk Parsudi
described, in a paper presented to a symposium at the University
of Indonesia, how the government was no longer trusted because it
had gone back on its own word too often.

"In short, the government has lied too often," the experts
said.

The two psychologists pointed out that many economic
variables, including the exchange rate, did not depend on the
market or the balance between supply and demand, but on factors
such as rumors surrounding President Soeharto's health, his
speech on the state budget, his telephone conversation with U.S.
President Bill Clinton, and the announcement of B.J. Habibie's
candidature in the vice presidential election.

"The focus of the matter has therefore shifted from economic
issues to psychological ones," the experts told the audience at
the three-day symposium to discuss implementation of the
1998/2003 State Policy Guidelines.

The two said that in theory, humans reacted toward something
they believed to be a reality, rather than toward the reality
itself. In real life, economic behavior is based on confidence,
not actuality.

For example, a woman may buy an expensive dress because she
believes it is exclusively made. "As long as she remains firm in
the belief that her perceptions are correct, she will be
satisfied and happy. If she finds out she has been mistaken, she
would become frustrated," the scholars said in the paper.

They pointed out that both the people and the markets had been
deceived by the government too often and had therefore lost
confidence in the word of the authorities. "The Indonesian people
have been given incorrect information for too long, so their
trust of the government was no longer real," they argued.

They awoke to this reality when fundamentals of the Indonesian
economy were exposed to be weaker than the government had
boasted, when foreign exchange reserves fell to only US$16.3
billion, and when basic commodities became scare and
unaffordable.

"One common reaction to frustration is aggression," Sarlito
said. "That is why low-income groups rioted, looted shops and
accused people of hoarding basic commodities."

Frustration also explained panic buying and student
demonstrations demanding economic and political reform, he said.

Mule

Another speaker at the symposium, educational psychologist
Soetarlinah Sukadji, bemoaned the poor quality of Indonesian
human resources.

The professor from the University of Indonesia School of
Psychology said that while industrialized countries worked to
adjust to the advances of the computer age and replace manpower
with mindpower, Indonesia was still struggling to produce
"horsepower with the brain of a mule."

She blamed the situation not only on poor quality education,
but also a lack of role models.

"The National Discipline Campaign is noble, but we can't have
good discipline if other parties do not respect the rules of the
game," said Soetarlinah.

"If the government makes the rules and then violates them,
such as in the case of the national car (where President
Soeharto's youngest son Hutomo Mandala Putra was given exclusive
tax breaks for the national car project), then what sort of
behavior can it expect from the people?"

Soetarlinah cited the need for environmental pressure to
impose discipline. Pressure, in the form of anti-nepotism, for
instance, should prevent officials from occupying a position for
too long or appointing relatives to lucrative posts.

"The relatives of a president, for instance, should not be
allowed to posses business enterprises in their own country," she
said.

The pressure should be institutionalized into laws, so that a
president should be able to say: "I would sacrifice wealth, even
the business of my family, for the sake of the country,", she
argued.

Yesterday, the symposium featured other prominent speakers
including economist Sri Mulyani Indrawati and sociologist Paulus
Wirutomo. Today's session will feature, among others, human
rights campaigner Miriam Budiardjo, constitutional law expert
Harun Alrasid, and a number of political scientists. (swe)