On Muhammadiyah's mission

I refer to your editorial of the July 12, 2000 edition of The Jakarta Post titled Muhammadiyah's mission. While I wholeheartedly support the promotion of social change and education promoted by Muhammadiyah I have to question its efficacy, especially with regard to our present situation.

You stated "To understand the importance of and wisdom of this decision, it is useful to remember that at the time Ahmad Dahlan founded the Muhammadiyah organization in 1912, the overwhelming majority of Indonesians -- with the exception of a handful of privileged bumiputera (indigenous people) -- were living in a state of backwardness and ignorance".

Please feel free to look around yourself, with troubles in Aceh, Maluku, Irian Jaya where people are dying every day, street justice where somebody can be beaten to death for as little as Rp 1,000 or burned alive if somebody claims they are thieves (true or not). Street battles between schoolchildren which cost lives on a regular basis, wholesale corruption and theft in government and the state apparatus and the oppression of civil rights. It would appear that we are still living in a state of backwardness and ignorance.

We just need to replace the following words in your editorials: Dutch, Colonial and Aristocracy with political elite. Indonesian Military, and corrupt collusive businesses, and you will have a fair idea that the robber barons of old have just been replaced by new faces.

Until such time that the majority of people in this country realize that they are being robbed blind and have no chance of social change, education, civil rights or justice unless they can pay for it, and actually stand up and call for changes they must still be considered backward and ignorant. Even the great hope of democracy was a sham with people being so poorly educated and conditioned not to think for themselves that they voted for personalities and not policies of the elected representatives who "represent" them.

RICHARD MANSON

Tangerang, West Java