Leader must bring back nationalism

Leader must bring back nationalism

From Rakyat Merdeka

The riots triggered by incidents related to ethnic background,
religion, racial origin, and social groups which have been
breaking out almost incessantly across the country are
inseparable with what the New Order has done which are as
follows:

1. An authoritarian government with a tint of militarism has
allowed security and other apparatuses to evict people from their
own land and has also condoned unjust practices in such a way
that the gap between the poor and the rich/business tycoons is
getting wider and wider.

2. One's wishes are invariably forced on others and the principle
of "the end justifies the means" is upheld. The law is not
enforced as a guilty person who may turn out to be not guilty or
the other way round. A closed government has always covered up a
lot of cases. It has done away with transparency. Many cases are
still unexposed, although the public can easily guess who the
perpetrators are or what they are actually about. These will
include, among others, the Marsinah case, the case of Udin-Iwik
and the district head of Bantul, the Busang-Freeport case, the
abduction of activists and the attack of the office of Megawati-
led PDI by a paid mob.

3. Practices of corruption, collusion, monopoly and nepotism such
as the felling of clove trees by the Agency for Clove Marketing
and Bufferstocking (BPPC), the purchase of used German warships
and so on.

During the New Order era, the opposition and outspoken
politicians were helpless. They could be easily sent to prison
and accused of being involved in G-30-S/PKI (aborted coup of
1965), subversion, a "formless organization" or so forth.

To normalize the situation, the present proreform government
must immediately and transparently handle cases related to
practices of corruption, collusion and nepotism by government
officials and their cronies. The New Order is indeed very smart
at orchestrating things and fooling people. During the New Order
era, every time a government official inspected a village and or
officiated a development project, he would claim that it was
thanks to Golkar that the development undertakings had shown
rapid progress. On this, even a layman may comment as: Anybody
can do what is claimed to have been done by Golkar because the
fund comes from offshore loans (without the least consideration
that our children and grandchildren will have to repay the
loans).

Now that the election campaign is approaching, officials and
ministers, covertly still affiliated to the New Order, have been
undertaking veiled campaigns, such as, handing over to regional
administrations their lists of projects. The leader that we
immediately need now is one who can bring back our nationalism,
which is not in a state of disorder.

ISHARDONO

Jakarta