KKN beast still wagging its tail
The hectic chase, not without much fanfare, alas, of people from the former administration era, will be like a bicycle trip into the jungles of the Amazon. It will be, at least as I see it, a long hazardous venture which probably is more easily started than concluded if it ever will be crowned with tangible, long lasting satisfactory results, and finally silence the cries for justice.
It would be outright naivete, I think, to eradicate this social illness or wipe out the pest entirely from the earth. In any society, free or oppressed, there has always been KKN (corruption, collusion and nepotism) practices reported openly or in secret, and under various degrees and political and organizational cloaks. The task seems to be as daunting as the battle against the oldest profession in the world.
The reform's main aim cannot possibly be cleansing the air from KKN bacteria until no single species is left, but keeping it to a socially acceptable minimum. It should not be at the expense of the common people. To a certain degree, in one way or another, in glaring fashion or merely spiritually, perhaps nobody is exempt from corruption. Assisting an associate to get a deal for a small commission or appointing a person to a certain post because you like him or her may be called a form of collusion. Favoring members of your family, like appointing your daughter to be a village head or your son-in-law to the post of director while there are others equally capable, is clearly nepotistic.
Remember that the students' reform movement directed their abhorrence against the excesses of such practices which had led to the rich and powerful acquiring excessive wealth while the majority of the people are deprived of the bare necessities of life and democratic aspirations and human rights. We see how so soon after the stepping down of the country's second president, one gets the impression that the KKN monster is wagging its tail again.
If there is to be a "social safety net" (an IMF term) then it is imperative that the common people and the unemployed in provincial capital cities are provided with easy access to food, and the provincial governors should be responsible for that in the first place. Because not only love starts from the stomach, according to my Dutch teacher Van der Bos, but all revolutions start from the stomach.
The presence of KKN germs in most cases is very hard to detect materially (substantially) and still harder, if not impossible, to prove legally until the guilty one is seen to try to flee the country.
I am afraid that the KKN beast will roar harder and get stronger to shed all KKN charges leveled by reformists and their sympathizers.
GANDHI SUKARDI
Jakarta