faraway

When we flied to Lombok on 2nd of July 2005, I read about teachers, schools, ‘failing students’ in Jakarta Post on the plane. This news about the failure of students in the national examinations. This year, the Government of Indonesia (GoI) conducted a national examinations for the first time. One of the purpose was to measure the students’ competency through centralized national examinations. Most of failure students were surpraised for their result, even they cried.

My first expression was “what a crazy and stupid government”. Jerome said “Why are you very emotional about that?” I am sorry to say that I feel very disappointed with GoI now. My personal opinion was the GoI could start to set higher standards after all conditions are met. The conditions are including the competent and quality teachers, sufficient infrastructure and contextuality to local conditions.

Two days before we flied to Lombok, I read many news about how expensive the education costs in Indonesia now. Money is everything to get higher education. I thought this is crazy because only rich people can get higher education. I believe that poor people can not afford it, even for my father who is a civil servant will be not able to afford it (but fortunately his last kid was already in university now). I know that the higher education fee is one of the impact of regional decentralization. I know that regional decentralization is part of our democratization process but I feel why the poor people get more bad impacts on this process. The health problems (polio outbreaks, malnutritions), unemployments, poverty, and education problems are totally getting worse and drastically the rate is increase.

The government had promised that by increasing the price of gasoline, they will allocate the subsidize for health and education. In other word the GoI had commitment to the poor. But until now, our GoI can not prove its commitment.

I was more upset when I watched news in TV about the long queue in many gas stations in all provinces in Indonesia. Indonesia had no enough gasoline stocks. Wow its crazy! Indonesia has so many gasoline resources, how come we have no more stocks! I thought it must be “corruption!”. Then a question came up in my mind, Will Indonesia in worse crisis economic situation again like in 1965 and 1997? Should we do demonstration and provide our GoI with other Tritura like in 1965?

TRITURA or Tiga Tuntutan Rakyat (three community demands?) happened in 1965 which were concist of (1) disperse PKI or Indonesia Communist Association, (2) decrease the price of community necessities, and (3) return to UUD 1945 or the constitution 1945.

Well I can not write anymore to describe it. The last but not least, I can not see more poor-people suffering because of bad politics and corruptions. I am hoping that the situation will be better soon and the GoI can prove its commitment to the poor-people. GoI has to start in realizing their promises to its citizens. I am hoping that I will find the way how I can help those poor-people.

Galuh, 12 July 2005 at 23.00 PM
I still want to write more but I could not describe my feeling in words especially in English. I believe that if all of you often read or watch news about Indonesia, you can understand my feeling.