Letter: Lapindo mud and Bank Century

I like the way people are all blaming Sri Mulyani and Boediono for bailing out a bank to stop the systematic collapse of the financial system brought about by the global economic crisis, and in doing so, saved a bank and its customers money retained jobs for the workers and stopped fear from gripping the market and brought us through this crisis relatively unscathed.

The bank still retains a large portion of the bailout money and when sold, it will ultimately go back into the country’s treasury.

Then on the other hand, we have forgotten about the Lapindo mudflow tragedy that continues to this day, which destroyed thousands of homes and wiped out thousands of hectares of productive land.

We no longer blame this tragedy on the owner of the company that caused this environmental crisis, but we applaud him for standing tall and shifting the blame limelight onto people who have done a great service to this country.

People have to start waking up and seeing the ulterior motives of all the political parties and the one written about above for the blame they attribute to both Sri Mulyani and Boediono.

Putting some perspective on the global crisis, Indonesia,
with nearly the same population as the United States spent US$790 million to stabilize the economy while the United States had to spend $780 billion, and their economy is nowhere
near stable!

Let me remind readers that the last time this country was in a financial crisis, the people throwing the blame right now were in charge of this country and they and the billions they corrupted in the name of bailouts were never held accountable!

Tanis Opan
Jakarta