Indonesia Update

Indonesia has local parliament in its system. And just like the central parliament, its members are also democratically elected.

Yandril was among the chosen one for the local parliament of Agam, West Sumatera. A simple man from a small party, it’s a wonder really how he managed to be elected. But he did, and he started working on the local parliament as honestly as possible.

One day the elected members are raising idea to give themselves a new car each. Naturally, most of them agreed with the idea. Yandril however, felt it’s not right to do, while the area doesn’t even have a single firetruck yet. He rejected it. A vote then held, and it ended up in a 45 against 2 situation — 45 members agreed to buy cars for themselves, and 2 (Yandril and one other) chose to purchase a firetruck instead.

Seeing the result of this democratic proceeding, the council then went on with the purchase.

The story got leaked to local media though. The local parliament got criticized. But, they responded by saying that the decision was made through a democratic process, and that’s it.
Everyone felt they can’t do much about it.

Fate can be really strange at times. Just a few days later, fire was ablaze in the area, destroying 7 houses in the process. If only the area had a firetruck, a lot may be saved. But it didn’t.

The people revolted. Under heavy criticism and a possible physical assault by the angry mob, finally the council withdrew their plan to buy cars for themselves, crossing against their own previous (democratic) decision.

Finally, the area now has a fire engine to help them with future fire problems.

Current democracy systems (even the ones in developed countries) are not perfect. This is just another example of it. It’s up to the people, us, to stand up to it, and correct it.
Don’t just leave it to fate, it may not work to our favor next time.

Source: the power of morality

This entry was posted Wednesday, September 13th, 2006 at 11:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.