Letters: H1N1 flu and political flu

Fri, 05/22/2009 1:24 PM  |  Reader's Forum

For the past few months, Indonesia, apart from facing the issue of global economic downturn, has been busy with at least two other issues. One is the near global pandemic of the H1N1 strain of flu, also known as swine flu, and the other is a flu that hits the country every five years - the political flu.

As regards H1N1, the government has, apparently, not quite panicked, as the country has had sufficient experience handling another kind of flu, i.e. bird flu, better known as H5N1, to which Indonesia was the greatest victim with more than 100 fatalities.

So far H1N1, which, according to the WHO, has infected 5,251 people in 30 countries since its first outbreak in Mexico in April and has claimed 65 fatalities.

The government has taken preventive measures to prevent the spread of the flu to Indonesia, where the Health Ministry says no one has yet been infected.

On political flu, almost everyone in Indonesia has seen the democratic feast, the legislative elections on April 9. The second one will be the presidential election, which is due to be held on July 8, contested by three candidates.

This kind of five-yearly feast has, of course, taken its victims. Those who contested the legislative elections spent a lot of money, some of whom got it from loans. When they knew they were unable to garner enough votes and therefore failed to get a seat at the legislatures, they felt the pain.

The same "virus" also infected parties that failed to meet the minimum parliamentary threshold of 2.5 percent for a legislative presence, and they plan to file lawsuits with the Constitutional Court over the poll results, including the voter lists that they claim stopped their supporters from being able to vote.

Meanwhile, the nine political parties that passed the parliamentary threshold, just a day before the deadline for registration of presidential and vice presidential candidates on May 16, were preoccupied with bargaining on forming coalitions and finding vice presidential candidates.

M. Rusdi
Jakarta

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