Signals of crisis ignored
I am writing in response to the letter 'Who really triggers the crisis' of April 30. The question posed by Lee Way Chun is a valid one. The answer to this is simple. The raider George Soros and friends pulled the trigger when they attacked in July 1997 the overvalued rupiah, exactly as they did years ago with the English pound.
Another question, not posed by Lee, is the origin of the crisis. The answer to that one is equally simple:
* Look into the 117 points of agreement with the IMF:
-- The essence: the system is required to undergo a certain degree of "normalization" and overhaul.
-- As we can see, Minister of Justice Muladi had to work overtime to deliver in six weeks a bankruptcy law to replace the old Dutch-made one, which did not match with today's standards of business, and at the same time, he is installing a brand new special court for handling bankruptcy cases.
* Look into the essence of the students' protests: total reforms, rejecting and stating the malperformance of the MPR/DPR for accepting the government's report on the past (sixth) five-year development.
If we look around the globe, for instance South Korea, the Attorney General is now investigating if there was gross negligence by authorities in 1996/1997, who did not act despite the clear signals (from the World Bank, the IMF, the ADB, etc.) that the crisis was in the making. Now, they are also investigating former President Kim Young-sam in how far he was responsible. The same applies to India, where former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao is being investigated on charges of corruption.
Further in our case: Read the World Bank's reports for the past 30 years, the segment of recommendations, and articles from Kwik Kian Gie.
Total malfunctioning of our authorities can be found in the minister of finance, and his friend the governor of Bank Indonesia, who did dare to state (July 1997) that our economy was fundamentally sound and different from Thailand... and a few weeks later, the system crumbled...
Y. SANTO
Jakarta