Omissions in the `Post'

Omissions in the `Post'

Herewith I am drawing your attention again to omissions in
your The Jakarta Post paper, the largest English language
newspaper in Indonesia.

Several weeks ago I informed you by fax that you omitted the
Foreign Exchange Rates column in your paper, for which I did
receive an answer by fax that you were sorry but that the error
was due to human error. As it happens, I have done some work as a
staff member for the Yellow Pages telephone book and know about
the procedures in the layout department, I am only wondering how
a prestigious newspaper as The Jakarta Post can make that kind of
mistake.

To my total astonishment you again omitted in today's
(Monday's) issue the Foreign Exchange column. Again a human
error? Or maybe a shortage of space due to your infernal
advertisements which nearly no one among your readers are
interested in? Why do you not publish an extra page totally to be
used for advertisements as happens with other newspapers as in,
for instance, the ASEAN region?

Further I would like to remark that in the last two Saturday
editions of The Jakarta Post you published the TV programs for
only that day and not for Sunday. Might this be due to your
fledgling Sunday paper? Or might this be again a "human error"?

Of course it will be known to you that other ASEAN English
newspapers have more pages and are cheaper.

A further point is that -- and this remark has been made
earlier by another reader -- we as your readers are expecting
more foreign news in your newspaper and not repeated local
(Indonesian) news as that can be obtained through the Indonesian
language newspapers and in more detail.

Next to being a news broker you have the task of being an
educator by informing your readers of what is happening in other
parts of the world as this world happens to "shrink." I do admire
the openness of certain writers in your column to speak the truth
about what is happening in Indonesia and about the national
sickness, corruption.

I know Indonesia better than maybe 99 percent of the pure
Indonesians. Please try to explain in this newspaper why it was
that the Dutch stayed on in Indonesia till the sixties, and try
to explain why it is that the Indonesian feels himself/herself
most at home in the Netherlands, outside their own country. Try
to explain the difference between the rule of 200 years by the
VOC (a private company) and the government of the Netherlands
East Indies 150 years thereafter.

Educate the people through your paper, let them know the true
history and not a mixture what I often see on TV, a mixture of
"company" and "Dutch" colonial reign. Please, if you are able to
explain the differences of colonialism.

Capt. R.W. DE JONG

Jakarta