RI and U.S. similarities

Students and workers have taken to the streets in both Indonesia and the United States.

In Indonesia, they originally protested the hikes in utility rates and in fuel oil prices, but later they started demanding that President Megawati and Vice President Hamzah Haz step down. In the United States, they are protesting their government's plan to attack Iraq.

The students and workers in the two countries represent the taxpayers. In the U.S., tax revenues are spent on paying the soldiers to "kill" the Iraqi people. In Indonesia, tax revenues are spent on, among other things, the payroll of the ruling regime.

In the U.S., the president can be forced to step down by means of something like a special session of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), as is done here in Indonesia.

Protesters in the U.S. believe their president, George W. Bush, is mentally challenged. In Indonesia, protesters believe the president and the vice president are insensitive to the people's sufferings.

Students and workers in the U.S. realize that Bush may be considered as having violated their constitution. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights maintains the spirit of the U.S. Constitution. So, if Bush attacks Iraq without a UN mandate, it means that he has not only violated this declaration, but also that he has violated his own oath of office, disrupting the organizational order of the United Nations as well as denigrating the dignity of several U.S. presidents (excluding Bush Sr.), such as Truman and Roosevelt.

In Indonesia, super-political policies that do not take into account the people's sufferings will render meaningless not only Article 33 of our amended constitution, but also the presidential oath of office. Where, then, has the dignity of Bung Karno and Bung Hatta, the two leaders that proclaimed Indonesia's independence, gone?

Unfortunately, many parties at home and abroad fail to notice that in both Indonesia and the U.S., policies drafted by the government have nothing to do with faith and resignation based on these nations' respective holy books. All are secular in nature.

The irony is that the oath for a public position in these two countries is taken under a holy book.

SUNGKOWO SOKAWERA, Bandung