January 12, 2016 edition

As head honcho of state-owned Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN), Sofyan Basir is understandably in a hurry to reach his goal of adding another 35,000 MW to the national power grid.Appointed to his job one year ago, he knows it isn't going to be easy to improve PLN's troubled finances and ensure that the nation no longer suffers from power blackouts. Whatever steps he takes, Sofyan should remember one important thing: It is better to be safe than sorry.
That's because a number of the former Bank BRI CEO's policies seem to be generating considerable suspicion. This is particularly the case with the Rp1 trillion, 35,000MW power program spread around 201 locations across Indonesia.

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More Opinion articles in other editions

January 5, 2016 edition

The transportation ministry should stop dragging its feet and start revalidating its data of fishing vessels. The sea transport directorate-general's feigned oblivion only triggers suspicions that it may be protecting corrupt officials.
According to data from the maritime and fisheries ministry, there are at least 87,000 fishing boats falsifying their loading capacity. Meanwhile, the transport ministry claims that only 18,000 ships are found to be fraudulent.

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December 29, 2015 edition

THE prohibition of application-based ojeks and taxis was revoked amid public outcry and the intervention of President Joko Widodo, who called it a hastily implemented ban. Too rigid in applying regulations, Transportation Minister Ignasius Jonan also made himself look uncaring to the city's dire need for proper public transportation system when he banned these popular modes of transport.
Referring to the Law No. 22/2009 on traffic and road transportation and Government Regulation No.74/ 2014 on modes of road transportation, Minister Jonan argued that online transport services were against the law. So, he sent a letter to the National Police chief on November 9 to go after Uber taxis and GO-JEK and GrabBike motorcycle taxis, also known locally as ojeks.

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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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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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