Guess What? Jeffrey A. Winters

Guess What? Jeffrey A. Winters

American academic Jeffrey A. Winters must have forgotten to
say "knock on wood" to cancel out potential bad luck when
claiming that Indonesia was a much safer country for him now that
president Soeharto has resigned.

"The last time I held a press conference here before Soeharto
stepped down, I had to go straight to the airport afterward to
save my life," Winters, an associate professor at Northwestern
University in Illinois, told reporters last Monday.

"But now, I simply have to be at the airport soon," he said,
pleading to be excused by the swarming reporters as his taxi
waited outside.

Ironically, less than two days after he left for the States,
Winters became a new target of the National Police for allegedly
slandering Coordinating Minister for Economy, Finance and
Industry, Ginandjar Kartasasmita.

Winters clearly overestimated the government's tolerance on
free speech when he quoted on Monday a report by the Econit
advisory group which alleges Ginandjar participated in shady
business deals with mining giant PT Freeport Indonesia during the
his tenure as mines and energy minister between 1988 and 1993.

"It's not proper for him (Ginandjar) to be the pioneer of
anticorruption," Winters said then, adding that Ginandjar had to
first come clean and resolve the Freeport issue.

Now, the political scientist, who last year came up with a
finding that a third of the World Bank's loans to Indonesia in
all likelihood, were siphoned off, is no longer allowed to set
foot in the country unless he retracts his statement about
Ginandjar and publicly apologizes. (das)