IMF implementation

Having read your article IMF package not in line with the constitution, March 9, 1998, I could not help feeling even more sorry for the millions of Indonesian whose welfare, health and even life are at stake through the games the government thinks it can play with the IMF by constantly bypassing or torpedoing the agreed upon implementation measures.

The latest evasion package, however, by taking the Constitution, which was drawn in 1945, and to mention that IMF measures that were agreed upon in 1998 and signed by nobody less than the President himself, who for me appears to be already displaying ambivalence, especially when the argument states that "Indonesia's economy shall be based on family principles." I wonder why the IMF package was signed in the first place supposing the contents of the Constitution were known at that time as well.

I also wonder whether the Indonesian government is engaged in a kind of high-stake poker game by daring the IMF and all other nations which were initially prepared to come to its aid and to offer advice to let the fourth-largest nation in the world go down the drain without further financial help, which it certainly would.

The price for this, however, will be paid by the people who have no way or means to participate in this "game".

ROLAND WOEHRLE

Jakarta