On Romain Bertrand's book

It is with great dismay that I discovered at least two grave mistakes in the published version of my review of Romain Bertrand's book, Indonesie: La democratie invisible, violence, magie et politique a Java, published in the Sunday Jan. 26 edition of The Jakarta Post.

I had specifically requested in this case that a copy of the edited version be sent to me beforehand to avoid such misleading mistakes. I can understand that space in a newspaper or magazine be restricted, but the essence of an article should remain the same and severe misquotes avoided even for the sake of brevity.

Neither Romain Bertrand, nor I in my book review, wrote that Gus Maksum was close to the "paranormal" section of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle. I wrote at the end of one paragraph: Gus Maksum cultivated close ties to the "paramilitary" branch of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) youth movement known as banser. Then in first line of the next paragraph: The paranormal section of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle led by Permadi also came under scrutiny.

Also further on, I wrote -- according to the book -- that Ibu Megawati Soekarnoputri undertook pilgrimages to tombs of Islamic saints, visited Balinese Hindu temples, and so on. I never, neither did Romain Bertrand anywhere in his book, ever add the qualification "animist" to Hindu as published in the Post "Balinese Hindu/animist temples" (sic).

KUNANG HELMI-PICARD, Paris, France

Note: We apologize for unintended error.

--Editor