Habibie's toy boys?
Habibie's toy boys?
Will Gen. Wiranto's questionable plan to deputize 70,000
civilians to join Indonesia's security faction have the effect of
ensuring greater law and order throughout Indonesia? Not if the
crop of new recruits turns out to be like their older brothers.
Armed Forces (ABRI) soldiers and police, those at the junior
level who are on duty on the streets, can be very affable when
meeting the public. But they seem to function largely without
supervision and discipline when they are on duty. How can adding
another 70,000 undisciplined and improperly supervised, virtually
untrained young men to the streets possibly help the situation?
Examples: Discipline? Last May 20 when I moved around Medan to
see the street situation for myself, young soldiers were more
than happy to chat with me and even to open their rifles to show
me what type of bullets they were using, when I asked out of
curiosity. I have been in a place of business in Medan when ABRI
troops entered and asked the owners for cigarettes and drinks.
(Would anyone care to put odds on how many of Medan's Chinese-
Indonesian businesspeople feel free to decline these improper
requests?) Asking security personnel, police or military, to
respond to public lawlessness or crimes-in-process is a study in
ignorance of official procedure? Lack of initiative? Cowardice?
Recently when I approached on-duty ABRI soldiers at a Medan
shopping plaza for assistance after I was stabbed in an attempted
mugging, they were too busy smoking to bother about calling the
police. Lounging and smoking often seem to be the most compelling
activities of soldiers on patrol, even of those assigned to the
most public centers of activity such as Jakarta's Jl. Thamrin-
Sudirman-Diponegoro triangle. There is no doubt a cadre of very
disciplined military at some level. But who are instilling the
discipline and sense of commitment in the young ABRI members
whose proper performance of duty and sense of national pride is
so needed? Maybe if Indonesia's mid-level military commanders
spent more time training and supervising their subordinates, and
less time sitting on civilian councils and the like, they would
have more time for ordinary troop supervision?
Isn't it a little bit of an insult to professional police and
military, to suggest that out-of-work youths from the provinces
can be integrated into the security forces so effortlessly?
Indonesia, having a large population of unemployed, sometimes
seems to throw people at problems as a problem-solving technique.
Those proposing this solution of throwing a new group of amateur
civilians at the problem of public lawlessness should be required
to explain their operative assumptions and objectives more
explicitly and rationally. Surely Gen. Wiranto is too smart to
react in such a knee-jerk fashion to such a serious problem.
DONNA K. WOODWARD
Medan, North Sumatra