Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud

Recently the Indonesian president visited the site of the “mud volcano” and was said to have been “moved to tears over the devastated lives of the thousands of families affected by the mudflow delivered to their homes courtesy of Bakrie-owned Lapindo Brantas Inc” After the visit in July he decided to order the company to do the what they should have done months ago.





The Jakarta Post, the premier English language rag in Jakarta (better be careful, I get a lot of my material from this paper) stated:

“Even the Indonesian President must be convinced by now that Aburizal Bakrie is more of a liability to the nation than he is an asset. Bakrie's continued presence in the post of Indonesia's Coordinating Minister for the People's Welfare clearly does not serve the interests of the cabinet, the government, or the people of Indonesia.

The only interests served by the continued presence of Bakrie in that senior and completely inappropriate post are Bakrie's own and, to a rapidly diminishing degree, the partisan political interests that saw him appointed in the first place. “

Says it all. Bakrie does not appear to be a very nice man!

For a bit of background, Bakrie ran the economics portfolio during Abdurrahman (Gus Dur) Wahid's presidency and performed magnificently as the skipper of the ship which guided Indonesia to the worst economic performance (read total fucking meltdown) in the country's history.

A Political Party (Golkar) executive and a mega millionaire (US$ not Indonesian Rupiah) he joined the current government and appears to be on course to give a convincing repeat performance off his inability to rise to the standards and levels of integrity required to be an honest politician. (But what the fuck, we are in Indonesia, honest politicians have never existed here).

Bakrie’s main problem is that he ignores his social responsibilities and has an entirely “I don’t give a fuck” attitude to the conflict of interests that is well recognised by other political forces outwith Indonesia.

Bakrie as the senior cabinet member responsible for the welfare of the thousands upon thousands of people whose homes, villages, and livelihoods have been wiped out by a disaster caused by a company he controls, would be unthinkable in most democratic countries.

So as you can see, once again, the nepotistic, cronyfied (is it a word) values entrenched within the Indonesian system still work as effectively as they have done since independence, and as always, it’s only the little people who suffer.

Oh, nearly forgot, the instructions to tidy up the mud-flow, ease the suffering that the President was said to have given, I think they were ignored!