Congratulation for Inauguration of Representative Board

On 1 October 2014, new members of representative board, usually we call as DPR, were officially inaugurated, and despite not all members are new. At first, I would like to say congratulation for them directly; nevertheless I do not live in Jakarta at present. Hence I only can say congratulation for them by using this social media. In this occasion, I also want to remind them all that they have a mandate from Indonesian people to bring better life for all Indonesian people as their main task. However in this passage, I am going to discuss few things related with inauguration event.

To begin this passage, first, I want to criticize about the cost to organize the inauguration event. Based upon information which I read from news, the cost to organize the inauguration event was about Rp16 billions. Is it true? I think this is too expensive amid condition like this in which government have a plan to hike the price of fuel oil because government do not have sufficient money to subsidize fuel oil. For your information, in 2009, the cost to organizing event like this only spent Rp3.2 billions which means the cost to organize inauguration event in 2014 increased more than fivefold. Hence the amount of money which DPR spent reflected inefficiency of budget spending.

Second is about salary. An ordinary DPR member can bring more than Rp50 millions a month as his or her take home pay. The DPR members before this period had agreed to raise the salary of DPR members approximately Rp13 millions a month. I am not jealous with salary of DPR members. I realize that DPR members are smart people which can count precisely how much salary they need in order to get break even point for money which they spent for campaign. In my opinion, with this salary which comes from the people money, DPR members must work hard and smart in order to do their main task which is to improve all Indonesia people life. DPR members along with government must create regulations which can provide numerous job fields, accelerate economy growth, and improve education and public health. I do not think that this salary is an effective method to avoid DPR members from corruption.

Third, I hope that DPR members in this period can reduce the expense for something unimportant. One of the unimportant things which I mean is comparative studies to foreign country which have been done by previous DPR members were not effective and frequently were not appropriate with the target of the problems which will be finished. People tended to see the comparative studies as waste of money. It does not have significant impact for improving of people life.

However, although there was a spat on the inauguration event when they wanted to decide who will be the leader of DPR, I still believe that DPR members in this period can create good collaboration with government in order to improve people life. I wish that DPR along with government can create regulations which can improve economy, welfare, education, and health of all Indonesian people.