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