Quality of political parties' members

Quality of political parties' members

Indonesia's terrible human resources development has made it difficult for political parties to select legislative candidates.

One of this nation's major problems is its poor human resources development, leaving it unable to compete with other nations.

Our people's inability to compete with people from other nations can be attributed to many different reasons, but the country's educational system is mostly to be blamed for having failed to produce creative and independent people who are able to think logically.

Even when the educational system does manage to create quality people, once these people leave school they are immersed in social values that respect materialism more than noble deeds.

Materialistic people, even if they are well-educated, tend to take shortcuts in order to amass great fortunes for themselves.

As such, members of the political elite are vying to form political parties without taking heed of the social investment in human resources development.

Political parties are generally formed without any awareness that they actually need quality people to serve the nation.

As a result, most of these parties take shortcuts and act arbitrarily in presenting legislative candidates who fail to meet administrative and legal requirements.

Monday is the final day for political parties to submit their lists of legislative candidates to the General Elections Commission (KPU), which will then announce the parties' final candidates.

Political parties have a big problem as recruiting good candidates cannot be done in the twinkling of an eye.

Indeed, the future of political parties can be determined by the quality of their members. However, the parties continue to talk instead of taking giant steps to enhance the quality of their members. -- Media Indonesia, Jakarta