Indonesians partly to blame

Indonesians partly to blame

Is it not time that Indonesians themselves had the courage to
accept some of the blame for their current dilemma? It is very
easy to point elsewhere. So far in this paper they have accused
the expatriates, the Americans, the IMF, the Jews, the Chinese
and now it's the turn of ex-president Soeharto. Whatever his
faults, the man clearly worked very hard for this country and was
the driving force behind its very fast development, yet he lives
in fairly modest circumstances for a person of his status.
Undoubtedly, the fact that people deferred to the family name has
allowed his children to build business empires, but that at least
gave employment to tens of thousands of people. And if the debts
and liabilities they acquired to achieve the same equal their
assets then their net worth is nothing. In fairness, names like
Kennedy, Thatcher and Gandhi have never proved a disadvantage
either.

So where has all the money gone? I would suspect that the
students need not look too far from home, because virtually every
single level of officialdom would seem to suffer from corruption.
Maybe, as Mr. Slack says, some at the bottom are just topping up
their salaries, but farther up the scale the greed is total. Your
paper has advised just in the past few days that Rp 600 billion,
paid in fiscal tax at Cengkareng airport, has been stolen and, of
the extra land bought for that airport, a quarter was sold off by
corrupt officials for another Rp 44 billion. How many hungry
people would that have fed?

This is just the tip of the iceberg, with Customs officials
alleged to be receiving between 10 and 20 times their monthly
salaries in corruption. Just suppose that the monies due to the
State are ten times the bribe how many millions of dollars are
lost to Indonesia every single month? Ferries sink and buses
crash, because safety checks have been compromised. And so it
goes on and on.

Few have faith in the investigative services and even your
judges admit that much of the judiciary is corrupt, so who can
cut out the cancer? It's difficult, but not impossible.

In corruption cases, under most legal systems, the burden of
proof is reversed, so it is up to the accused to prove the monies
received in dubious circumstances were not related to corrupt
purposes. On Sept. 21 The Indonesian Observer reported that
Bekasi Justices were investigating the World Bank Project Manager
and the Head of the Labor Office (both having Indonesian names)
about their inability to account for some 30 percent of the Rp 4
billion funding given to provide the recently unemployed with
food for work. So sometimes, the facts are not really as
difficult to find as some correspondents would have us believe.

I would ask those students if they believe that tourists will
be encouraged to come to Jakarta, if they have to run the
gauntlet of people blocking the road and threatening them on the
way to the airport? Do they believe that financiers and investors
will be encouraged to strengthen the rupiah or invest here, when
they see mobs kicking down the gates of their own parliament?

When you demand the removal of something, it is always wise to
know what you will replace it with. The best service the students
can give this country is to improve the quality of their degrees
and to leave the state affairs to wiser counsel.

JOHN DENYS

Kettering, UK