Silence is not always golden

Silence is golden seems to have been Megawati's principle in responding to some issues in the past. This stance has proven effective and has had a positive impact on people's belief in respect to her maturity and capacity to lead the nation toward a better future.

However, in the case of A.M. Saefuddin's recent statement, in my opinion Megawati should gently break her silence. Being anonymously declared the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) Perjuangan's presidential candidate, now is the right time for her, in the spirit of transparency, to publicly announce her history, revealing her family tree, career, wealth and, last but not least, the crucial question about her religion.

I do believe that by doing this she would contribute much to our nation building in respect to people's mental readiness to accept things as they are, rather than letting people live with falsehoods.

Such real golden action should also be followed by public figures like Amien Rais, Matori Abdul Jalil or others in a position to stand for president, otherwise the tendency to repeat the same "old song" would continue, i.e keeping a candidate secret until the right time.

ATTILA RAHAYOE

Bekasi, West Java