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