Reform? Who is it for?

Reform? Who is it for?

To the political elite in this country, the lot of millions of
Indonesian children is obviously not as important as the
political fate of President Abdurrahman Wahid, the deteriorating
relations between Indonesia and the United States or the question
of whether or not Hutomo Mandala Putra, the youngest son of
former president Soeharto, should go to jail.

The media (including yours truly) gave scant or no coverage to
a national conference on children which was held in Jakarta last
week. Most newspapers regarded the event as not newsy enough to
merit even a small mention in their pages, let alone front-page
treatment. Thanks to such indifference, few people can recall
that there was such a conference. It is even harder to find
someone who can recite the content of the discussions.

University of Indonesia psychology professor Yaumil Agoes
Achir, in a front-page interview with this newspaper on Tuesday,
however, gave some shocking news about the condition of millions
of children which should bring shame to society (and the media)
for neglecting the issue entirely.

The figures, revealed during the conference in an attempt to
draw public attention, are too mind-numbing to be believable: 6.8
million children between the ages of 7 and 15 are out of school;
20 million are malnourished; the infant mortality rate is 100 for
every 1,000 live births; there are 3.6 million child workers for
12 million children who are on the street or are neglected; up to
four million children have physical or mental disabilities, and
almost all have no access to proper care; and hundreds of
thousands each year are subjected to sexual abuse and forced
prostitution, with little hope of legal protection. Yaumil said
most of these figures virtually doubled from what they were
before the economic crisis struck Indonesia in 1998.

What is even more mind-boggling than these numbers is
society's virtual indifference, particularly the media and
politicians, the very people who should have raised the alarm
about these problems. For the past year, the nation's elite seem
to have been more preoccupied with the struggle for political
power. Economic problems have been relegated from the national
agenda, while social problems, including the children's lot, have
been removed completely from the agenda.

The children's fate, along with many other major social
issues, were actually given some prominence when the economic
crisis began to affect the lives of many people in this country
in 1998. We recall the massive social safety net programs
launched by the government, with the help of the billions of
dollars of World Bank loans, to cushion the poorest of the poor
in Indonesia from the worst impact of the crisis. We also recall
the spontaneous massive public fund-raising campaigns in response
to reports of children dropping out of school, of increasing
prevalence of undernourishment among children and of increasing
impoverishment among people as a result of the economic crisis.

The public campaign to help the poor somehow lost its momentum
in the middle of 1999 when the nation became so consumed with a
series of elections, first the general election in June and later
the presidential election in October. After Abdurrahman Wahid
became Indonesia's first democratically elected President, the
country should have turned its attention back to resolving the
outstanding social and economic problems.

Alas, that has not happened at all. Since the October
presidential election to this day, the nation's political elite
have been caught in an endless struggle for political power.
These are the same people who came to power by riding on the back
of the reform movement which toppled the authoritarian regime of
president Soeharto in 1998 in the hope of bringing meaningful
improvement to people's lives. They are the ones who have the
mandate from the people to make those changes.

Now, more than one year after the election of the first
"reform" administration, life has hardly changed for most people,
including, as we can see from the statistics above, millions of
children. For many, things have even gotten worse.

As repressive and corrupt as the regime of Soeharto was, it at
least tried to take care of children's needs, from their
education to their general welfare. The regime did not
necessarily do a good job but it had the political will. The same
cannot be said about the current administration. Which raises the
question: for whom was the reform movement intended? Certainly
not for the millions of children who dropped out of school, the
millions of children who have become undernourished or the
thousands of infants who died within weeks or months after their
birth.