Wahyoe Boediwardhana, Malang – It's no longer acceptable for the country's leaders to cry or talk their way out of the nation's many problems, former president Megawati Soekarnoputri has said.
"People don't need any more dramatization, but they do need real action," Megawati, who chairs the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said Saturday. "Many have complained to me about their hard lives... "
Megawati delivered her speech during the inauguration of 1,012 graduates from the Muhammadiyah University of Malang, East Java, and received much applause from the audience.
She was apparently criticizing President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono who shed tears and became angry last week as he listened to the stories of people displaced by the mudflow in Sidoarjo, East Java.
Megawati said skyrocketing prices of cooking oil, the difficulties among farmers to get agricultural production services, including tools and fertilizers, and the lengthy settlement for the mudflow disaster victims were no longer issues the nation's leaders could try to make excuses for.
"What the people need is affordable prices of cooking oil, rice and descent education along with an assurance there will be high prices on husked rice," she said. "And workers need assurance for their rights too."
Megawati further focused on the deteriorating state of the nation's spirit and the low moral of the young generation – which she said was due to the poor quality of education.
Due to poor education levels among Indonesia's youth, she said they had developed "half boiled" characteristics. She said this means the younger generation wanted "to be modern only half-heartedly so what they got was modernity headed in the wrong direction".
With a kind of mediocre capability, coupled with the absence of good governance management, the Indonesian people had fallen victim to an object of trial and error by other parties, Megawati said.
The Indonesian people were not aware they were part of the world's largest archipelagic nation. Indonesian children, she said, would today often say Indonesia had 17,000 islands.
"When I was still the President, however, I checked carefully through satellites and found that the number of our islands reaches over 23,000," she said. "Therefore if we sell one or two islands, no one will know because many of the islands are still nameless. She said selling these islands would cover the country's foreign debts.
Megawati further said after her last congress in Bali, the PDI-P had already chosen to act as an opposition party. "As an opposition, we do not only disagree with the government, but we provide alternatives for solutions to any arising problems," she said.
When asked whether there was still a threat of disintegration and with reference to the flag hoisting incident by separatist movement members of the South Maluku Republic in front of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Maluku recently, Megawati said such an incident should not have occurred.
"Our solution is unity and a strengthening of the creation of the unitary nation," she said, adding that the party's base was Pancasila, the state ideology.