1) The
first passage entitled “A New Energy Push”
The great American
oilman Paul Getty once said: “The formula for success; rise early, work hard,
strike oil.”
Hashim Djojohadikusumo
must have taken his advice to heart as he made his first billion when he struck
oil in Central Asia. Since selling off that oil field, Hashim has launched into
various ventures, the latest being rubber plantations. As with any successful
entrepreneur, Hashim is not content to rest on his laurels and is always on the
lookout for new opportunities.
With global commodity
prices expected to remain strong for the foreseeable future, Indonesia’s
plantation sector is in for a long and sustained upward ride. It is no surprise
that a number of leading conglomerates are investing heavily in the plantation
business, such as Sinar Mas, the Salim Group and Raja Garuda Mas.
These large players are
joined by thousands of medium-sized companies that are also aggressively buying
land and planting palm oil, maze, rubber and soya bean. Apart from providing a
source of food and raw material for a range of products, agriculture is also
widely seen as a source of renewable energy.
Hashim is the latest
big entrepreneur to get involved in commercial agriculture and hopes to produce
bio-ethanol down the road. If he and other entrepreneurs succeed in producing
and developing bio-ethanol on a large scale, Indonesia could be at the
forefront of the alternative energy revolution that is now just underway.
The private sector is
best placed to lead the search for alternative energy as entrepreneurs
understand how to invest wisely and identify what works. This will be a long
and sometimes challenging journey and entrepreneurs must be ready and willing
to face some failures. This is how the market economy and capitalism work and
only those who have the will and the brains to succeed will get ahead.
Success is therefore
not guaranteed and the private sector could use some help from the government
to mitigate the risks. Given the high cost of research and development, a tax
break for companies that conduct R&D in areas where a breakthrough would
benefit the nation as a whole is needed.
If more companies
devote funds for R&D, the more likely are the chances of success. A tax
break or some other form of incentive would be welcomed and would encourage the
private sector to play a part.
This is how the government can play
a constructive role in helping private businessmen succeed. Although
entrepreneurs ultimately seek profits, their endeavors benefit society in the
process.
2)
The second passage entitled “A
Question of Injustice: What can Business Do?”
The government, it
appears, has identified an underlying problem in our society: inequity. On
January 12, some 3,000 people turned out to demand changes to the Agrarian Law,
staging protest at the State Palace and the Parliamentary Complex. Fatalities
have occurred in protests over land rights at Mesuji on the border between
Lampung and South Sumatera, and in Bima regency of West Nusa Tenggara.
There has been a
palpable rise in the temperature on the streets. Coffee shops are buzzing with
theories and insights. It is by no means like 1998, but it is time that
business decided on the best way to deal with a possibly extended period of
political instability.
May Heaven forbid that
the country should start to tear itself to pieces once more. No-one wants to
see a repeat of the of the Suharto period. And, the government must be given
credit: it has achieved much, especially in the maintenance of stability,
allowing business to get on with the job of creating wealth that in turn
creates employment and a rising standard of living for all. Stability is vital
if Indonesia is to achieve its goal of becoming a developed nation and a force
to be reckoned with in international affairs.
The question of
inequity, by definition, has deep social roots. While statistics are hard to
obtain, some maintain that a mere 0.2 % of the population controls 57% of the
national assets. That may or may not be true, but wealth and even statistical
inequity do not in themselves represent a crime against humanity. Assets used
well build societies, complete with social services that respect the rights of
all members of the community.
This is Indonesia’s
quest: to build a nation that is strong and independent. With our sights on
that goal all of us need to work together to create a business plan for the
Indonesian of the next generation.
We are reluctant to
connect the current concern over inequity directly with the 2014 elections. What
is clear, however, is that as those elections approach, attempts to “rock the
boat” will be more frequent. In such a climate, business needs to keep a cool
mind and make a stand on the side of steady, stable progress.
Ironically, the
question of equity- or the lack of it- has seen Budiman Sudjatmiko jump to the
floor, pushing for a parliamentary inquiry. Budiman, now a member of the
Indonesiaan Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), was a founding member of the
radical People’s Democratic Party (PRD), a leftist challenger to former
President Suharto, who promptly threw the party leaders into jail. Widespread
concern over equity issues is a natural focus for leftish political interests.
The question of whether business
should stay out of politics or get involved is not a concern. That is the
political right of the individuals who control corporations. Business should,
however, concentrate on what it does best: creating wealth for stakeholders at
every level, with the aim of creating a more wealthy and equitable Indonesia.
3)
The third passage entitled “Man
to Watch”
Chairul Tanjung is indeed a man to
watch. Building from the entrepreneurial spirit he demonstrated during his
student days, he is now one of the country’s leading businessmen. His
initiative to acquire regional banks is a breakthrough. No one has ever
considered creating synergies to enable the regions to prosper economically, so
this represented ingenuity and out-of-the-box thinking. He is leading an
economics at the National Economic Committee, which gives recommendations to
the government. I hope the government is listening. On the media front, it was
also a smart move to acquire the most popular news portal and integrate it with
his two television stations while simultaneously publishing a digital newspaper
and magazine. I hope he will succeed in his endeavors in building a better
Indonesia.
4)
The fourth passage
entitled “Alert on Fast Lending”
China’s credit growth
in January is a reflection of the economy’s steady rebound. However, the amount
of growth raises concern.
The total new
financing, an indicator of overall liquidity, amounted to 2.54 trillion yuan
($404.4 billion) in January, an increase of more than 50 percent on December
and more than double that of a year ago. New yuan lending also exploded,
reaching 1.07 trillion yuan, compared with 738 billion yuan a year ago.
Such growth can be
rightly attributed to the economy’s solid recovery. The Chinese economy
bottomed out in the last quarter of 2012 and the upturn continued into January.
But it is also because Chinese banks tend to lend more in the first months of a
year to pre-empt any policy tightening in the latter half.
The new lending in
January was the highest monthly reading since February 2010. The return of such
high-level credit expansion could boost economic growth, but it could also fuel
the dangers of a low-quality investment boom and rising inflation.
During last year’s
central economic work conference, which set the tone for policy-making this
year, the leadership required that “lending should be increased properly”. Such
a guideline, however, should not be taken as a green light for unrestricted
credit expansion.
As a sign of a
resurging credit-backed investment boom, many provinces have set high annual
investment growth targets for this year, with some of them at 30 percent or
even higher, a level that is too high for an economy undergoing
quantity-to-quality economic restructuring.
Rising inflation could
be another fallout from the ongoing credit expansion.
The official year-on-year
growth of the consumer price index was 2 percent in January, down from the
seven-month high of 2.5 percent in December. But what is more notable is the
month-on-month change. In January, consumer inflation picked up by 1 percent
month on month, the strongest since February 2012.
Considering domestic
production costs are expected to rise, and given the amount of easy money in
the international markets, monetary policymakers should plan early and remind
alert to be the credit growth
5)
The Jakarta Post, Friday
22 2013 (page 28)
VANIA
CROWNED MISS INDONESIA 2013
JAKARTA : Vania Larissa
still could not believe her luck after being crowned Miss Indonesia 2013,
defeating 33 other candidates from all over Indonesia.
“I never thought that I
would be appointed but I had dream to be a princess,” Vania, who represented
West Kalimantan Province, said after her coronation in Jakarta.
The 18-year-old Vania
has promised to do her best in representing Indonesia in the Miss World
contest.
“I will try to not let
people down. Thank you for your faith in me,” Vania said as quoted by kapanlagi.com.
6)
The Jakarta Post,
Friday 22 2013 (page 28)
DHANI
HAS ‘MARRIED SEVERAL TIMES’
JAKARTA : Musician Ahmad Dhani has made a
controversial statement, saying he has married several times.
Dhani made the comment
after journalists asked him about his marital status. “I’ve never been a
lifelong bachelor,” said Dhani, who has reportedly been married to singer Mulan
Jameela, as quoted by news portal Detik.com.
“If you ask me how many
times I’ve got married, I’ve gotten married several times,” he said. However,
he refused to reveal the identity of his wife.
7)
KPK CHIEFS TO FACE
ETHNICS BOARD OVER LEAK
Bagus BT Saragih and
Hans Nicholas Jong
The Jakarta Post
The leaders of the Corruption
Eradication Commission (KPK) have agreed to establish an ethics panel to
investigate their involvement in the leak of a classified document.
KPK chairman Abraham Samad and his
four deputies agreed that an ad-hoc ethics committee would be the best way to
discover the truth behind allegations that one of the five leaked the document,
KPK spokesman Johan Budi said at a press conference on Thursday, declining to
identify the KPK leader implicated in the scandal.
According to the spokesman, the
ethics panel would comprise between five and seven members, including at least
one KPK deputy commissioner and a member of the KPK’s advisory board.
“The rest will be experts and
respected figures from outside the KPK,” Johan said. “The KPK’s commissioners
will appoint one of their number who does not have a conflict of interest as a
member of the committee.” John said.
The committee’s members will be
determined by early next week, the authenticity of the leaked document, a draft
letter ordering the investigation of Democratic Party chairman Anas Urbaningrum
for allegedly accepting a luxury car as a gratuity from state-owned firm PT
Adhi Karya.
The investigation of Anas turned
political after President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the party’s chief patron,
pleaded with the KPK to make a final decision as to whether Anas should be
charged or cleared.
The leaked document circulated for
several hours before Yudhoyono announced he would take over the party’s leadership
from Anas.
The leak sparked discussion on a
widening rift between the KPK’s commissioners and that its independence might
have compromised for political interests.
According to a copy of the letter
obtained by The Jakarta Post, three KPK leaders signed the draft: Abraham and
deputies Adnan Pandu Praja and Zulkarnain.
Spaces for the signatures of deputies
Bambang Widjojanto and Busyro Muqoddas were blank. Adnan later claimed that he
had retracted his signature, saying that he discovered that the letter was
produced outside normal procedure.
On Wednesday, Johan said that three
KPK commissioners had been questioned over the leak, declining to confirm if
those questioned were Abraham, Zulkarnain, and Adnan.
Although, the document has been
declared authentic, Johan said that the KPK had never conducted a case expose
on the allegations surrounding Anas, which must be done before a person can be
brought to trial.
Johan confirmed that the commission
would hold the long-delayed expose for Anas on Friday. This is not the first
time the KPK has established an ethics panel to probe its leaders.
In October 2011, such a body cleared four KPK leaders – although not
unanimously – of ethics allegations leveled by former Democratic Party
treasurer Muhammad Nazaruddin, who claimed that they had accepted his bribes.
8) US,
GORONTALO SEEK COOPERATION IN AGRICULTURE, TOURISM
Syamsul
Huda M. Suhari
The
Jakarta Post/Gorontalo
The Gorontalo provincial
administration and the United States Consulate General in Surabaya are
exploring investment opportunities in the tourism and agriculture sectors,
especially in corn cultivation.
Gorontalo Maize Information Center
(GMIC) head Muljady Mario said the visit by Heahter Coble, who heads the US
Consulate General’s political and economic affairs section, on Tuesday was
aimed at seeking information and opportunities on the possibility of working
together.
“They have a strong desire to work
together after learning about the available resources in Gorontalo,” said
Muljady.
One of the potential areas the US was
interest in, he said, was cooperation in the tourism and agriculture sectors,
especially corn.
Muljady said the potential of corn
farming in Gorontalo was quite promising, given the vast arid land, but was
only hampered by the traditional dry-land farming system, which mostly relies
on natural rain –fall.
“Gorontalo is home to around 200,000
hectares of arid farmland, but farmers still rely on rainfall,” he said. Consequently,
during the dry season, corn farmers are not able to plant crops, thus affecting
productivity.
He said Gorontalo needed quite a
large amount of investment, including from the US, to build an irrigation
system on arid land.
He added that so far, only three
foreign companies had invested in corn farming, in addition to nine local
companies, but most of them sought to exporting the commodity.
“We need a corn processing plant for
livestock fodder, which has a higher value. We hope the US could invest in the
sector,” he said.
Muljady added that Gorontalo was
ranked ninth in Indonesia in terms of corn production at 4.56 tons per hectare.
During the 30-minutes meeting held at
the GMIC, Coble expressed an interest in helping Gorontalo develop its tourism
sector, which lacks infrastructure.
Coble said as a relatively young
province, Gorontalo offered many interesting opportunities and should be
further developed.
“There are many things about
Gorontalo I do not know. For example, I never knew that Gorontalo has scuba
diving sports,” she told The Jakarta Post.
She said that if possible the US
Gorontalo General would return to Gorontalo in April with a delegation to
explore opportunities for establishing further cooperation.
9) CASH,
SEXISM AND VIOLENCE KEEP WOMEN OUT OF POLITICS
Katy
Migiro
Reuters/Nairobi
Violence, a deeply chauvinistic
society and a lack of cash are locking women out of elected office in Kenya,
east Africa’s leading economy but a laggard when it comes to female
representation.
The country’s new constitution
guarantees women a third of seats in parliament, but two and a half years since
its adoption, Kenya’s male-dominated assembly has still not passed the
necessary legislation to put the constitutional principle into practice.
In next month’s general election only
one of eight presidential runners is female, and women held just 10 percent of
seats in parliament, half the sub-Saharan average.
“Society sees our place being the
kitchen and the bedroom. Nothing beyond there,” parliamentary candidate Sophia
Abdi Noor told Reuters. Nor is the only woman running for parliament in the
remote, arid northeast.
Hailing from Kenya’s conservative
ethic-Somali community, Noor and her family have been on the receiving end of
public taunts and curses since her first foray into politics in 1997.
“People abused my husband. They told
him, ‘Now wear the skirt, let Sophia wear the trousers’,” said Noor, who in
2007 was handed a seat reserved for marginalized groups.
The northeast region has never elected
a female lawmaker. Across Kenya, from the fertile slopes of the Rift Valley to
the steamy Indian Ocean coastline, female political aspirants painted the same
picture. Politics is the preserve of men in a country that struggles to deal
with women in authority.
Many look with envy to Rwanda, where
more than half of legislators are women, more than anywhere in the world.
There women have pushed through
reforms granting them equal inheritance, property and citizenship rights. The
lack of women in Kenyan politics, critics say, means women’s and children’s
rights rarely get a proper hearing in the rowdy parliamentary chamber.
“We are a patriarchal society. Power
and money are two things that are very difficult for men to let go of,” said
Naisola Likimani, a former head of advocacy at the Africa Women’s Development
and Communication Network.
That desire for power and money – and
political office tends to bring both in Kenya – means that violent attacks, or
threats of violence, against women are not uncommon.
Last month, Millie Odhiambo was
seeking her party’s nomination for the Mbita parliamentary constituency in
western Kenya. Before voting even began in the party primary, she says,
supporters of a rival loaded the ballot papers on to a pickup truck as three
men in police uniforms entered the polling station firing guns in the air.
Their intent, she said, was to spoil
the vote. “I literally had to jump on the pickup to protect that ballot,”
Odhiambo told Reuters. She went on to win the ticket.
In other primaries, female candidates
said that they were threatened with rape and shunned by elders for violating
tradition. One found a rival had
littered the polling station with condoms with her name on them in an attempt,
she said, to portray her as promiscuous in the eyes of conservative voters.
In next month’s general election, 156
women will battle it out against men for parliamentary seats, a sharp fall on
the 269 who contested the last ballot in 2007.
This is, in part, because another 300
will focus their bids on the 47 seats reserved for women representatives of
each country, a now post. This, however, will only guarantee women 16 percent
of the overall seats in the chamber.
A complete lack of political will was
to blame for the last parliament’s failure to implement constitutional
guarantees of affirmative action, said social policy analyst Atieno Ndomo.
“People who are benefiting from this
arrangement have no interest whatsoever to change it,” she said. Kenyan
lawmakers are among the best paid in the world.
On woman determined to shatter the
common belief that Kenya is not ready for a female president is Martha Karua.
Nicknamed the “Iron Lady” after the
steely former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, that former justice
minister is the only female presidential candidate in the March 4 vote.
Karua’s gender, and the fact she is
divorced, often count against her in this deeply religious society. “A woman is
supposed to be under men,” said 23-years-old Hyphe Ouya at a rally attended by
Karua. “We don’t believe a woman could be president.”
Women politicians don’t only need to
change the minds of men like Ouya, they also need cash to run their campaigns.
10) THE
REASON WHY WE SHOULD CONTROL POPULATION GROWTH
According to the Central Statistics
Agency (BPS), Indonesia’s population has doubled within 40 years from 119.2 million
in 1971 to 237.6 million on 2010. In another 40 years from now our population
will exceed 450 million, resulting in the increased extraction of natural
resources and increasing pollution.
All environmental scientist and
activism must be alarmed about this high population growth. But some Indonesian
Muslims are not worried. For them, fears of a human population exceeding the
earth’s carrying capacity means a lack of faith in God. They strongly believe
that God will provide every creature the necessary resources to live.
We can see those who have this view
among the ranks of the Islamic-based Prosperous Justice Party (PKS). Tifatul
Sembiring, a former PKS chairman who is now communications and information
minister, has seven children. The current PKS chairman, Anis Matta, has nine
children, while his predecessor Luthfi Hasan Ishaaq has 11 children. The three
Muslims leaders are relatively still young and may have more children in the
future.
It is no coincidence that the three
PKS chairmen, like other party members who are devout Muslims, have many
children, which must be religious driven.
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