Why would anyone, already being in the spotlight of success, admiration, smartness, and leadership potential, do something so plainly stupid before the public eyes to ruin all those privileges in a trice? Is this what most psychologists would identify as 'self-destruction''? How awful..
I can't help but feeling pity and concerned for the beloved young and bright academia, Professor Anak Agung Banyu Perwita from Parahyangan University. I don't personally know him, but seeing his curriculum vitae, abundant with multiple achievement in academic field of international relations, he should have known better to commit such a naive plagiarism in national newspaper. Better off, he could have been smarter not to undermine publicized works that might jeopardize his rising career.
It all came into the surface when Jakarta Post, a well-known Indonesian national newspaper in English, published his article which titled “RI As A New Middle Power?” on November 12, 2009. Shortly afterwards several people called the newspaper pointing out that the article have unbearable similarity with another article written by Carl Ungerer in a scientific journal in Australia two years earlier. After finding the evidence, Jakarta Post finally retracted the said article and apologized to the readers and Carl Ungerer himself on February 4, 2010.
After the announcement of plagiarism in Jakarta Post, Banyu wrote in his Facebook account that “I do apologize for what I have done unintentionally. Thanks for all the concerns.” and the next morning he said “Perhaps, it’s better for me to resign.”
Unfortunately, the word 'unintentionally' in his apology was something hard to believe when later on some other evidences of his plagiarism were disclosed. There were at least four of them, which also published in the same newspaper. One of the articles called “Rising China and the Implications for SE Asia” published on February 4, 2008 was allegedly copied from two articles written by Phillipines professors Rommel Banlaoi and Aileen Baviera. Others were “RI's Defense Transformation” on June 14, 2009 that was plagiarized from Richard Bitzinger's work in 2004 and “US Growing Interest in Southeast Asia” published in July 30, 2009 that was copied from Catharin E. Dalpino's article in 2008. Check Hireka Eric's post in Kompasiana for more info about it.
The unbelievable thing about his plagiarism is that how easily it was to identify it. In the earlier articles, he copied some sentences and phrases without mentioning the sources. In the latest article he basically just changed several words to make it more fitted to Indonesian context, making it 70% similar with the original one, but still no utterance of its source.
Plagiarism: literary theft; when a writer duplicates another writer's language or ideas and then calls the work his or her own; to avoid the charge of plagiarism, writers take care to credit those from whom they borrow and quote.
