Integrity called for

Integrity called for

A number of legislators appeared most eager to get to the
truth and ask questions when Rudy Ramli, Bank Bali's former
president director, testified in front of the House of
Representatives. This is a practice that deserves to be continued
and others involved in the scandal must be given the same
treatment.

Besides, there are many others, state authorities as well as
leading personalities in private business, who must appear before
the House. The problem is that the House must remain consistent
in its stance and treat everyone with no regard of status since
all citizens are equal before the law.

Now that we are in the middle in our reform campaign and are
trying to restore the dignity of the law in the eyes of our own
people and of the world, the time has come to test the integrity
of our legislators by observing their handling of the Baligate
scandal.

We appreciate the persevering attitude of our House members,
even though so far relatively little of the truth has come to
light. We must be patient and careful in tackling the next
episode of the case because of the possibility that a number of
state officials are indeed involved in the scandal.

If those suspicions are proven to be correct and a conspiracy
does indeed exist involving certain individuals at the Indonesian
Bank Restructuring Agency, Bank Indonesia and the Standard
Chartered Bank to fix a hostile takeover of Bank Bali, then our
national banking industry is truly facing a serious danger.

-- Bisnis Indonesia, Jakarta