Your comments on the question about great challenge in trying to fight against corruption as shown by the alleged criminalization of KPK suspended leaders and your experience in dealing with corrupt officials.
I have lived in Indonesia since 1993 and I am experiencing the same problems. I have been extorted out of a lot of money by the cops and the immigration and now have bad experiences on almost a daily basis.
I have to pay four times the local price for a place to live. I am not seen as a human being anymore but as a target to get money from. The mentality is spreading from the top to the bottom.
I have moved from Jakarta to Yogyakarta because the life was not acceptable anymore there but Yogyakarta is just the same. The roads are better, the air less polluted but the mentalities are even worse.
Corruption is even higher. Indonesia has changed so much since the 1990s. Will Indonesia ever change? Not with the people in charge now. The police and those in the justice system are nothing less than greedy mafias. Doctors don't care about their patients. Professors don't care about their students.
All that matters is money in this country. Death penalty, total confiscation of all personal and close family assets and very long prison sentences for any corrupt civil servant is the solution. And not for the big boss only.
The country needs a serious clean up. The KPK is not enough. A new institution must be created for the everyday corruption the people are confronted with when they enter a public building. And how can the people can respect foreigners when the government and the officials openly consider them as just a source of easy money?
Eric Duval
Yogyakarta
My son failed twice when applying for a driving license via Motorcyle (SIM C) and Ca (SIM A) in Kalideres, West Java. We wanted to go through the proper legal way of applying the licenses.
Later I found out that in order to pass the license test without being failed by the officer, one has to go to a mediator, usually from a driving school. Apparently, I found out that the officer and the mediator had made a deal to pass their clients.
This has to be stopped and herewith, I appeal for the Police or Indonesia Corruption Watch to have the license division be held accountable and be fair in passing the students' driving test.
Hussein Baron Sutadisastra
Bandung
The trial of 55-year old Minah for cocoa-stealing is another fine example that strengthens public suspicion on how big businesses can easily control the actions of the police by giving it enough "incentive", even at the risk of making the police look so incompetent!
Indra Soebagjo
Jakarta
Everyone around here has been victimized by corrupt officials. Dealing with these involves paying up and cursing them and their next seven generations to hell under one's breath usually, in their faces very occasionally.
Hadi
Surabaya
In the case of Bibit-Chandra, it is for the Court to decide on whether or not there was extortion or crime of corruption committed.
In other world, let there be no tyranny. Trial judges must be impartial and independent. But to whom should the judge be liable?
Theoretically, the judge is only liable to God the Almighty. But practically, the judge may have political motives.
Henry Sitanggang
Jakarta
