TO any right-thinking person, this is shameful. Last Monday, at the Padang District Court, 43 of the 55 members of the West Sumatra Provincial House of Representatives (DPRD), were given jail terms of between two and three years. They had been found guilty of embezzling Rp4.6 billion from the 2002 regional budget. Apart from the jail sentences, they were fined hundreds of millions of rupiah.

Are the other legislators clean? Not necessarily