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)