Keep your promises, please

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