Subsidy for legislators

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