Nepotism and transparency

On the front page of the Dec. 31 edition of The Jakarta Post Minister of Manpower Abdul Latief strongly denied allegations of financial impropriety saying "I'll be damned. I'm a tycoon..." This declaration brings to mind a question: How do Indonesia's public servants become wealthy tycoons?

Government salaries in Indonesia are notoriously low. How do public officials accumulate enough wealth to take expensive vacation trips, send wives overseas to shop and children overseas to study, indulge in expensive hobbies like racing automobiles, and develop hotels and factories? How can officials afford these luxuries on unadorned salaries? And how do the offspring of high government officials accumulate enough money to become tycoons while still so young?

A few days ago, Abdurrahman Wahid and Loekman Soetrisno decried the tendency of government officials to take an ostrich- like posture in relation to unpleasant facts such as an impending food shortage. Maybe there are other realities people do not want to notice: the inexplicable accumulation of vast wealth by government officials and their sons and daughters.

Sometimes young tycoons have unexceptional educations and few obvious business talents or professional skills. What they often do have is a close, convenient connection to those with the power to bestow contracts, permits and favors. Isn't there a question lurking beneath these realities?

Indonesia's financial recovery experts emphasize the need to end nepotism. But names are never mentioned. Nepotism is written about as if it were a formless, nameless evil somewhere out there in cyberspace. Nepotism is not, however, a faceless concept. Nepotism has a name: the names of persons favored because of a family relationship. Whose names belong on Indonesia's nepotism list?

In recent months, President Soeharto has found it necessary to remind the public that he should not be made into a cult figure and should not be placed above questioning. Nepotistic tendencies may have arisen against the wishes of the President and his children, because of the willingness of lesser officials and businesspeople to ingratiate themselves by granting special favors to the children from the time they were young.

Now when a major new project is announced and one of the President's children becomes a partner, no questions are asked openly, not even by the media. Unless the business arrangements and sources of wealth of the President's children are disclosed, they may be wrongly suspected of nepotism.

DONNA K. WOODWARD

Medan, North Sumatra