December 22, 2015 edition

He passed away two weeks ago at the age of 79 in the country he loved so well. Scholar Benedict R. O'G. Anderson became an important part of Indonesia's modern history. One of his best-known academic contributions is his study on the September 30 (G30S) movement titled A Preliminary Analysis of the September Movement, or better known as the Cornell Paper. Along with a number of academics at Cornell University in the United States, among them Ruth McVey, Anderson concluded that the incident was not a coup by the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) but an internal conflict within the Indonesian Army.
The paper was published on January 1, 1966, just three months after the bloody incident, and it was seen at the time to have been a hurried piece of work. The trials of senior PKI executives had just begun at the time. Later, it was revealed that the conflict within the Army was just one cause of the G30S movement, and the Cornell Paper could not have been totally mistaken.

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More Opinion articles in other editions

December 15, 2015 edition

The current House of Representatives (DPR) has been very tardy with its legislative duties. It has been working for a year but has passed fewer than 10 laws from its target of more than 100. With all these bills yet to be deliberated on, a proposal to pass a law on contempt of court suddenly appears.
The plan to pass the contempt-of-court law seems rather hasty. In developed countries, such as the United States, laws like this are able to uphold the authority of the courts. But our nation is in no desperate need for one because contempt of court is already covered in the criminal code (KUHP).

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December 8, 2015 edition

The results of the National Committee on Transportation Safety (KNKT) investigation into the AirAsia QZ9501 crash have uncovered the cause of the accident that killed all 162 passengers and crew. Last week, KNKT Chairman Soerjanto Tjahjono announced that the cause of the crash was human error.
He cited five major factors that triggered the crash almost all of them pointing to mechanical failure. The factors were a malfunctoning rudder travel limiter (RTL) or a system to control the plane's turns, insufficient maintenance and problem analysis, indications of pilot error in reporting procecures when the RTL malfunctioned, an unconnected cable in the flight augmentation computer and the pilot's manual control of the aircraft.

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December 1, 2015 edition

One of the suspected Paris terrorists, Frederic C. Jean Savi, who is now wanted by the French authorities, may have resided in Bandung for six months in 2005. Savi was known to have been involved in militant activities in Indonesia. He is also suspected of being the brains behind the bomb explosion in front of the Indonesian embassy in France on March 21, 2012.
Before Bandung, Savi, who was known as 'Tall Ali' while he was in Indonesia, had visited the Darusy Syahadah Pesantren (Islamic boarding school) in Boyolali, Central Java. It is believed that he may have lived in Java for about a total of three years. In Bandung, he studied with the Cibiru jihadi group, to whom he donated his Mitsubishi Galant automobile, to be used as a car bomb.

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November 24, 2015 edition

The recall of Prosecutor Yudi Kristiana from his secondment at the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) is yet another evidence that something is not quite right with the Attorney-General's Office (AGO). Yudi was tasked by the KPK with investigating the bribery case involving North Sumatra Governor Gatot Pujo Nugroho. He also headed the interrogation of Evy Susanti, Gatot's wife, who allegedly had bribed the NasDem Party Secretary-General Patrice Rio Capella.
NasDem, the political party led by media tycoon Surya Paloh, was the main supporter of Muhammad Prasetyo as the attorney-general in the cabinet of President Joko Widodo. This connection merits scrutiny as a factor in the recall of Prosecutor Yudi, particularly since the AGO has provided no good reason to recall him from the KPK.

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November 17, 2015 edition

We give a thumbs-up to Myanmar, which has just held a proper general election. Twenty five years ago, Myanmar also held elections, but the military regime then in power ignored the victory of the National League for Democracy Party (NLD), which garnered 52 percent of the vote. The only thing that NLD party leader Aung San Suu Kyi won at the time was house arrest.
This time, the people flocked to give their support to the party, without intimidation that accompanied them on their way to the ballot boxes. 'Humility' has replaced arrogance from the military junta. Seeing the volume of support for the NLD, and the lack of votes for the government party, the Unity, Solidarity and Development Party, the president of Myanmar was quick to congratulate the NLD and Suu Kyi all while reminding them that the counting had not finished.

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November 10, 2015 edition

Since Indonesia gained its independence seven decades ago, one seemingly unsolvable problem has been rice, the national staple that has become, over the years, both an economic as well as a political commodity. Governments come and go, but inevitably all of them have had to face, at one time or another, the challenges of efficiently managing the supply and demand of rice.
It is fair to say that issues concerning rice or the price of rice, to be exactcan make or break a government. According to the Central Board of Statistics (PBS), the price of rice this year has increased by 12 percent, and a World Bank study estimates that every 10 percent increase in the price of rice adds 1.1 percent to those falling below the poverty line. The results of this latter study lead us to the conclusion that the successes of the poverty reduction program could be wiped out simply by an increase in the rice price. In other words, the government's target of reducing the poverty rate from 11 percent in 2014 to 9.5-10.5 percent in 2015 could turn out to be a vain hope.

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