Does the Government Need Our Trust?

Trusting your government is really important for your government. They need your trust to provide better services for the public. Yet, your trust barely exists if your government continuosly demonstrates performance that is diminisihing your trust. Our government, the government of the Republic of Indonesia, is one of the examples of such kind of government. Of the three governmental domains (i.e., executive, legislature, and judiciary), none of them have been demonstrating good performance, which is important to capitalize public trust. We want our president leads us to combat against corruption, to solve several critical problems (e.g., Lapindo, Century, etc.). But his achievement, to my opinion, is still far from being satisfying. We want to have a parliement that really represents our interest, public interests. Yet, our parliamant members keep doing something that is violating our trust. They are too busy with their own political interests, neglecting the interests of their constituents. They travel around the world, wasting our money, in the name of comparative study. It is not actually a comparative study tough. It is a fake comparative study, which does not meet any academic standard of comparative study. We want to have a highly trusted judiciary, but we hardly believe that such a trusted judiciary exists in this country. Jails can be negotiated. Punishment can be reduced. A confict can be "replaced" by an innocent person (Do you remember the Bojonegoro case, huh?). All, off course, depend on how "strong" you are. As an Indonesian citizen, who love this country without reserve, I do want to give a high level of trust to my own government. But, do they really care about my trust? Do they really need and expect their people's trust? If they do, they should stop doing something that continuosly decrease the trust of their people.