April 14, 2015 edition
THERE are three reasons why Megawati Soekarnoputri's speech at the opening of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) congress in Bali last week should be lamented. Commenting on relations between the president, vice president and the PDI-P, which endorsed Jokowi's presidency, Mega as party chair, stressed the importance of the "president to toe the party line because the party's policy is in line with the people."
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April 7, 2015 edition
TO dispel any notion of over-expectations, the critics of the 2015 National Mid-Term Development Plan should take a second look at how the Nawa Cita agenda came into being. This work program containing the nine priorities of the Jokowi-Kalla government is the product of the recent presidential election campaign. Understandably, therefore, the Nawa Cita goals tend to be seen as little more than campaign promises, too high a target to achieve.
To those who hold sacred anything labeled as a Sukarno heritagegiven how the name Nawa Cita resembles Sukarno's speech titled 'Nawaksara'the overly-ambitious features is clear to see. At the risk of sounding exaggerating, some of their objectives are unrealistic, given current economic, social and political factors. For example, how can we 'build Indonesia from the sidelines' with the current development orientation, particularly with the state's financial incapacity to develop much-needed infrastructure.
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January 1, 1970 edition
IT'S not easy to stem the flow of Indonesians sneaking into Syria and Iraq. The number of people enlisting with the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) militias and related groups in those two countries continues to grow. In August last year, the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) counted 56 persons leaving to join ISIS, but today the National Counter-Terrorism Agency (BNPT) disclosed a far bigger number of departures last March: 514 Indonesians.
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January 1, 1970 edition
CRIMES involving banks are becoming ever crazier. It's no longer the lowly bank tellers who are suspected of colluding with white-collar bank thieves, but also the senior-most officials of the banks themselves.
Then there's the other kind of thievery, which makes it possible because of the lack of an effective oversight system in analyzing the capacity of debtors to repay loans.
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January 1, 1970 edition
THE job of stamping out the murky oil mafia is not for the faint of heart. President Joko Widodo, during his election campaign last year, promised he would abolish the existence of an ominous oil trading syndicate in the country. Today, four months into the presidency, it's business as usual for the oil traders who for a long time have enjoyed a good run for their money. It is therefore imperative to remind the president that the lie of the oil-trading land has changed little since he took over the government. In short, very few reforms in this area have been sufficiently implemented to evoke any hope of change for the better.
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January 1, 1970 edition