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Your letters: Poverty reduction and graft fighting
Facing justice: Medan Administrative Court judge Amir Fauzi speaks to journalists on Monday after being questioned as a graft suspect in a case that also involves North Sumatra Governor Gatot Pujo Nugroho and his wife
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Facing justice: Medan Administrative Court judge Amir Fauzi speaks to journalists on Monday after being questioned as a graft suspect in a case that also involves North Sumatra Governor Gatot Pujo Nugroho and his wife.(JP/Don) (JP/Don)
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span class="inline inline-center">Facing justice: Medan Administrative Court judge Amir Fauzi speaks to journalists on Monday after being questioned as a graft suspect in a case that also involves North Sumatra Governor Gatot Pujo Nugroho and his wife.(JP/Don)
Please allow me to comment on the two articles on the opinion page of The Jakarta Post July 28 edition 'Fighting corruption won't end poverty' by Ricardo Hausmann and 'U2's Activism' by Alan McPherson.
The two authors and their articles miss the key point that the lack of verifiable data and the impossibility of accountability on poverty alleviation in the informal sector.
As you well know countries that face the many challenges of massive poverty have been dominating informal societies and economies, where the poor survive and operate their 'micro' enterprises. Informality means that many citizens do not have verifiable registration, no verifiable addresses and no verifiable economic activities.
This means that their governments cannot monitor them, cannot protect them and cannot support them in a sustainable, verifiable, accountable manner. It also means that 'micro-credits' cannot be assessed for necessary risk management. This is a key to the terrible failure of so-called development institutions such as World Bank, UN and of so-called international and national aid agencies.
Continued suffering from poverty by unknown citizens and their activities explains the massive dependence on abuse, corruption and on charity, meaning national and foreign 'help'.
Concerning the efforts of popular stars such as U2's Bono, I do not doubt for a second their commitment. But if they are so committed and strongly promote their efforts why do they refuse to take responsibility for failure? They need to report on Key Performance Indicators (KPI) on reducing poverty. Take for instance the hugely popular Live Aid concert to fight hunger in Africa in 1985.
There was no transparency on the amount of money collected, there was no transparency on its allocation and hunger continues to return in particular in Africa (and elsewhere: for instance, 60 percent of India's population depends on Food Aid under Sonia Gandhi's program, which I find shames the name of hero Mahatma Gandhi).
So far, after decades of experience and repeated disappointment, the only sustained result of charity and 'foreign aid and development cooperation' seems to be the popularity of western politicians and pop stars. But as one of our neighboring countries' PM recently experienced, Indonesia's people do not anymore wish to feel obliged for receiving such 'gracious donations'.
Indonesia's current government under the committed leadership of President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo is aware of the fact that poverty reduction and fighting corruption depends on an inclusive, effective and transparent government system that can see, monitor, protect, train and otherwise support every citizen, every business and every expense.
Petrus Pematang
Jakarta
