April 28, 2015 edition
THE serious illegal wildlife trade is not a monopoly of Indonesia-let alone of Aceh and other parts of Sumatra-where most of the crime seems to take place. Yet conservationists point to Southeast Asia as the region with the most acute problem. According to a 2008 World Bank report, this region is not only a key supplier of global demand for endangered and protected species, it is also a major consumer center as well as a trafficking transit point.
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More Opinion articles in other editions
April 21, 2015 edition
REPORTS of drugs being found in prisons are nothing new. The fact that some drug dealings escape the prison guard's 'watchful' eyes is also not news. We are also not too surprised that some prisons have been turned into places where ecstasy and shabu-shabu (crystal methamphetamine) are processed and produced. But what makes no sense is how the same person, Freddy Budiman, an inmate on death row, is the brains of this dastardly crime.
Freddy was sentenced to death on July 15, 2013, because 1.4 million ecstasy pills were found in his possession. He has submitted an appeal and was outright denied by the Supreme Court in September last year. It should also be noted that when he was tried for his latest crime, he was already serving a sentence for a separate drug case and serving time at Cipinang Prison.
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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