Keep your promises, please

The campaign for the July 5 presidential election has entered its third week and all presidential and vice presidential candidates have already made numerous promises. They have at least promised two things -- to uphold the law and fight corruption, collusion and nepotism (KKN).

Amien Rais, for instance, has promised to fight KKN hands-on from the presidential palace. Wiranto meanwhile has promised to impose the death sentence on corruptors, just as the Chinese government has done.

However, these promises are -- at the moment -- just promises. The reform era has, however, "boosted" the existence of KKN. Our control body -- the House of Representatives and the provincial and district legislative councils, supposedly the locomotives for reform -- have turned out to be corrupt themselves.

And now we are all waiting for a new government and its promises. Will these promises be fulfilled? It seems we won't know until it is in place.

To prevent us from being victims of sweet promises, we should take note of candidates' promises and later ask our new president and vice presidents to fulfill them one by one. If they start breaking their promises, we should be ready to say goodbye to them.

At present there is little sign the spirit of reform is still alive. People are fed up with seeing the political elite lose break their commitment to improve the country's lot. -- Media Indonesia, Jakarta