About a couple of weeks ago (around mid-February 2010), I met a friend who was visiting from Indonesia to Singapore. Given the ongoing debate in Jakarta (in particular, the vicinity around Senayan), we could not avoid not talking about a case with Bank Century. At one point, my friend said that it might be too late to do anything about this case. Now for readers of this entry, this case involved the government of Indonesia’s decision to bailout a small bank that suffered from liquidity crisis at the height of the 2008 global economic crisis in November 2008. I will not talk about the case or whether the policy was right or not. The point of the discussion was if it was too late for the government of Indonesia to do anything about this case. I raised the point of “to govern” as the mandate of the elected officials anywhere in the world. To govern, according to Thesaurus.com, includes to “serve the people” or “to carry out” the mandate. The key is to serve the people. And serving the people does not recognize a specific timeline for elected officials (yes of course, there is a period to hold an office; in many cases that will be at least 4 years). There is never too late for any government, Indonesia included, to carry out its mandate. The key is to ensure programs that will benefit the people of the country are carried out in a transparent, accountable and effective manner. Elected officials need to be close to their constituents. Ultimately, it is the people who will tell elected officials if it is already too late to carry out the mandate or serve the people.
