Redistributing assets

Any extreme swing of the pendulum will be prone to arouse suspicions, or at least raise questions. This truism also applies to the direction which our economic development policies have been taking. For more than 30 years we have been favoring big business in our eagerness to attain growth. Now we are being driven to side more with the common people. The concept of a people's economy is founded strongly on a decree adopted by the People's Consultative Assembly, though it has still not been adequately popularized.

So, which direction are we now taking and how will this new system operate? In the people's minds, this siding with the people would express itself in the form of providing greater opportunities to small and medium-sized businesses. Now, though, the talk is about redistributing assets. No wonder the issue is raising controversies.

We are now at a crossroads and we must go in a new (economic) direction that better suits our needs. The common people indeed yearn to see economic resources managed in a more equitable manner so that nobody will be unfairly advantaged. At the same time, this process of readjustment must not ruin those who, through hard labor, have succeeded in accumulating ample assets. The government could achieve this aim in a passably congenial manner through a program of privatizing state-owned BUMN enterprises and making new resources available without harming already established businesses.

The current transition cabinet could score highly in the eyes of the people if it could show them that their efforts and aims are clearly focused. Up to the present this has not been achieved. This is apparent, for example, in the way in which the government revoked fertilizer subsidies, while, on the other hand, it is spending hundreds of trillions of rupiah to inject money into the banking system. Surely, in order to maintain fertilizer subsidies the government could have negotiated with the International Monetary Fund. For the present, therefore, our worries are concerned more with the working manner of this transition cabinet, which gives the impression of being less than solid and well focused.

-- Bisnis Indonesia, Jakarta