Peace settlement for a price

It was well after 10 p.m., on Aug. 30. As I approached the nearly deserted Senayan traffic circle from the Ratu Plaza area, two buses overtook me from the slow lane on my left. To let them through, I moved over to the right side of the street. But just as I was to enter Jl. Sisingamangaraja, a police sergeant major signaled me to pull over.

"You're trespassing on the road line," he said, and asked to see my driver's license. I protested that there was no road demarcation and I was not breaking any rule. He kept insisting there was a road line, but did not show which one he meant.

Instinctively I sensed his ultimate goal -- to squeeze money through a "peace settlement " bargain, a routine "street tradition" so notorious to drivers all over Jakarta (perhaps Indonesia?). They are more on the lookout for driving errors than regulating traffic, the adage goes.

As a fresh university graduate, I realized I was even more broke than the person before me. Assuming eventually that I had nothing to offer, he became more "businesslike". A tilang-ticket (ticket) was issued, and I will have to appear in court. How many such encounters, I wondered, will there be?

Predictably, the seat belt requirement will eventually "create" venues of "peace settlement" and any corruptive deed whatsoever. There will also be a substantial burden on owners of old cars manufactured without seat belts. How much will they have to pay out in this economic calamity for the advantage of a small segment of red-tape sponsored merchants?

Given the number of vehicles in Jakarta, any speeding is out of the question. The streets are more jammed than flowing. Presumably, this seat belt thing is implementable only for highways and long distance driving.

I call on our legislators to pay attention to these matters. They are supposed to be stamping out the corruptive mind and ill- deeds derived from this seat belt issue or from any traffic encounter. Above all, they should clear the streets from "illegal levy hunting" individuals and institutions.

V.S. SONNY FAAH

Jakarta