Mr. President Wants to Go Undercover

I was flicking Kompas newspaper from back to front – a strange habit I can’t seem to shake off – and stumbled upon this tiny article in the Business and Finance section, right on the top left corner, in the Kilas Ekonomi column, which says: Presiden Ingin Menyamar untuk Melihat Pungli (President Wants To Go Undercover To See Wringing of Illegal Taxes).

Having my curiosity piqued, I decided to read further. Apparently, our Mr. President had concluded that the major problems that prevent the growth of Indonesian economy lie in the infrastructure, licensing, taxing and security area.

However, it seems that he was quite intrigued with preman (street thugs) executing illegal taxes to business owners in general. Quoting from the article, Mr. SBY said, “Imagine if our country is dominated by them. Any kinds of preman. We have the 1945 constitution and such, so we have rules here. We can’t let ourselves be dominated by them, otherwise it will create even more difficulties later on. How can we expect things to be low cost and efficient if there are preman everywhere?”

The article continued depicting how pissed off our president was that he had decided to go undercover himself so that he could see the real illegal taxing activity in action, live and all, and even take rides on the trucks (they are the ripe targets of illegal taxing) just to see the location and whereabouts of where were these condemning activities were being performed.

“I want to put on sunglasses and a fake mustache. I want to see the spots where these thugs stop vehicles and how many times do they do it. Who knows maybe what I’ve heard are just exaggerated news, but then again maybe it’s true.”

Well never mind those thugs, Mr. President.

Why don’t you just visit one of your government offices and see how the officials use the tax-payer’s money to do things that are not in the interest of the country, such as taking too many coffee breaks and demanding unnecessary ‘fees’ from people registering or renewing their documents and making it a tedious and most often, painful process for each and every applicant, not only because of the mild fraudulence but also because of the leisurely pace they seem to take to get one document finished.

And that’s only those in the lower ranks.

If you go and visit those in the house of representatives, you will be outraged as to see why they need to be supplied with twenty million rupiah worth of laptops when all they do with it is to watch porn DVDs and play solitaire, demanding that they receive an increase in salary so that they can afford to buy those new 7-series BMW and maintain their mistresses in a nice apartment, fuck all night and when going to big meetings (the ones where they are featured by local television), proceed to fall asleep without realizing that they have been recorded live on the telly.

Instead of going undercover with fake mustache and all, just put on an office boy uniform, spend a day in one of the government offices and watch how the country is in ruination, day by day, day in, day out. But I guess that’s impossible because due to your pot belly, there’s no way an office boy will look that obese.

You see; if you tidy up the way government officials run this country, you won’t have to go undercover to see those thugs in action because the logic falls to the thinking that if this country is run properly, there will be enough dough for everyone, so there won’t be any thugs existing in the first place.

Where do you think all the tax-payer’s money go? and how do you think they are being used? you are definitely stupid and ignorant to think that the people who work for you are honest to God’s people.

Fuck the fucking illegal taxing and focus on the problems that lie right in front of your bleary eyes. There are many more important matters that need pressing on – even I notice them, and the more depressed I am reading the newspaper every single day because there ratio of bad news against good news are 95:5, and it seems like you are not doing anything about it. What irks me even more is that you seem to see no fault in going to EX and watch bloody soppy movie and shedding a tear, and yet you express nothing for the millions of malnutritioned children all over the country.

Stop being in denial and start doing something right. The people voted for you because they believed in you, not because they wanted to hear you giving lame and stupid advices or suggestions. Enough with the suggestions – we all know what’s best for us.

But do you?