Subsidy for legislators
According to the Aug. 7 Jakarta papers, every member of the House of Representatives (DPR) will receive a Rp 70 million subsidy for the purchase of a Kijang car. So, for the 500 legislators the total subsidy is Rp 35 billion. If so, we should certainly feel concerned, as such a subsidy increasingly reflects the "insensitivity" of the House towards the suffering and agony of other classes of people, especially the approximately 900,000 refugees brought about by the regional violence and riots who haven't been settled as yet and whose future is still gloomy.
The House members' "shameless" conduct is indeed ironic and irritating because they still underline their own interests while they completely ignore the majority of the people's grievances. Our hearts have been wounded by their "fantastic" salary increase, the low level of attendance in various commission sessions (some members never even showed up), the very poor attention to the session producing a decision on the membership of the Commission for Investigation of Officials' Wealth (KKPN), which was only attended by 58 members upon voting, have now been aggravated by the said subsidy, because it is definitely against the sense of justice of the people at large who are still struggling against a lot of suffering and misery.
Their justification of the cars for the sake of mobility in performing their tasks is quite illogical, as most of their work is in the DPR building. So, for DPR duties, they only need transport fares from home to the DPR building. A task beyond the building is only incidental, and there must be another budget for it. Whatever reason they may present, the "spirit representing the people" is extravagantly addressed, but is poor in respect of its materialization because it has become apparent that they are only busy with wrestling power (interpellation, constitution amendments etc), while the pain directly felt by the majority of people hasn't been solved. The eradication of corruption, collusion and nepotism; Bank Indonesia's liquidity granting problem; the Texmaco problem and other corruption cases such as Pertamina's, Bank Bali's, Garuda's etc, as well as riots and mass violence raging everywhere are not questioned by the House members as "intemperately" as with the interpellation agenda to the government.
We still have strong hopes that House members like Laksamana Sukardi, Sophan Sophiaan, Ekky Syahruddin, Faisal Basiir, Ahmad Sumargono, Sutradara Ginting and other sufficiently vocal members, will be prepared to openly strive for the cancellation of the subsidy or at least for rejecting/returning the subsidy if the funds have already been distributed. We are sure you are not ashamed or afraid of being excommunicated or hated or even recalled by your management for doing this sympathetic action, because we believe in your credibility. Give us convincing proof that the public can easily understand that all of you actually represent the suffering people. Just to remind you, each House member represents almost 400,000 Indonesian people.
Hopefully this appeal will receive a positive feedback from the House members.
H. WISDARMANTO GS
Jakarta