Talk little, work much

Talk little, work much

From Media Indonesia

When I was in elementary school, one of my teachers taught the
class to "talk little, work much". This implied that it was
better to work a lot and yield something useful, than to talk a
lot without having any tangible results. Nowadays the youth of
Jakarta like to say, "Don't only talk, you must come with proof
of what you say."

Bung Karno, Indonesia's first president, said "talk much, work
much". He contended that when we talked a lot we would produce
more ideas. A lot of talk made somebody creative and more work
would result, according to him. I think Bung Karno wanted to say
that people must have innovative ideas, and together with the
people he turned ideas into real work useful to the community,
country and nation.

Second president Soeharto's idea seemed to be, "talk little,
work much". The people were not allowed to talk much, but had to
work in obedience to the government. The New Order government,
backed up by the Army and the police, was apparently worried that
if people talked a lot it would threaten "political stability and
national security". Thus, control of the press, the NGOs,
political parties, etc. was strict. This resulted in
extraordinary economic growth, making Indonesia a newly
industrialized country. But the situation turned sour with the
coming of the monetary crisis, a result of the lack of social
resilience and the people's weak economic foundation.

Now, in President Abdurrahman Wahid's era, I think the
situation has changed into "work little, talk a lot". Just think
of the statements made by the speaker of the People's
Consultative Assembly and the speaker of the House of
Representatives. We often do not know whether they are speaking
in their official or private capacity. They should be able to
restrain themselves to avoid having their statements
misinterpreted.

Abdurrahman's Cabinet members talk a great deal compared to
the concrete results they achieve, at least that is the opinion
of some people. Anyway, their work and performance are not
optimal; there is more talk than work. The Cabinet needs a
reshuffle.

In the case of intergroup conflicts in Maluku, Abdurrahman
only said that he knew some people from Jakarta were behind the
conflicts. If this is known, why are there no steps being taken
to stop it?

AMIR KARAMOY

Jakarta