Thread: Indonesian Justice

Froggy, you of all people are questioning another persons grammar and spelling! Ha! LMAORAOTF! :lol: :lol: :lol:. As the manager of a major Research facility I can assure you my grasp of English is quite acceptable.

I do apolologize, there is some Aussie slang in my post which you might not have understood, namely "stiff bikkies" is a polite way of saying "stiff shit" and to "hoon" refers to behaving stupidly in or on a vehicle of some kind, something I'm sure you are familiar with. Surely you know what anarchy is?...

The rest is pretty self explanatory I think, apart from a few quick typing errors, so maybe I should dumb it down into redneck so you can understand it clearer.

I don't have a problem if people want to get pissed and drive/ride around like idiots or jump on the back of a bike without the neccesary skills whether licenced or unlicenced. But I don't want to be affected by it either so you can go as mad as you want in a farm paddock or similar but STAY OFF THE STREETS! I don't expose you to harm from my stupidity so why should I have put up with yours! Being on holidays is not an excuse, it isn't that hard to behave sensibly to avoid killing or injuring another person, drunk or sober. There really is no excuse for some of the behaviour that can be witnessed by bike riding tourists in Bali and you're wasting your time and words if you think it's acceptable.

Putting somebody elses safety at risk through blatant disregard and stupidity is inarguable in any context and it certainly doesn't add to the ambience one little bit in Bali, regardless of what you believe Froggy.

Originally Posted by Markit

Don't give the b.s. corruption in Asia argument, cause it aint just there friend, and it aint keeping the economy down - not at that level, at least.

So where exactly do you draw the line? Where does your ok corruption end, and where does the bad corruption start???? Are the kids at the lowest level who can't go to school because their parents can't afford to pay..is that ok? How about the guy who recently wouldn't let an injured expat fly to Singapore for emergency treatment without a large bribe because his exit visa had expired..was he on the ok??

If you don't think corruption isn't crippling this country you are not paying attention.

Ok, I'm not trying to be an apologist for all forms of corruption but my meaning was more meant to express my belief that corruption is endemic and part of the human experience that we all have to deal with all the time.

Not to get too philosophical but to use the example of the "corrupt" policeman; In our world police earn enough (more or less) to have a relatively nice life and be able to feed and educate their children to an acceptable level. This comes from taxation - people in the developing world, as a rule, don't earn enough to pay taxes - how do you pay for policing if there is no tax base? Teachers? Doctors? Bureaucrats? To my mind it's a case of "carts and horses". Once a society has reached a level of affluence where they can afford to pay taxes corruption then becomes less, automatically - I expect that if you were to ask the policeman in the film what he thought of corruption he would hate it too - but feeding his kids is more important, as it is to us all.

The idea that police in Bali don't earn a good wage is one often thrown around but it's simply, in Indonesian terms, not true. If it was such a shitty job, why pay Rp60m to get in the Academy. Starting salary is, I'm told about Rp1.200.000 per month plus a raft of benefits that others don't get.

Would the policeman hate it..I don't know. I sat with a bunch of my Indonesian friends and discussed this very topic. The advice I was given was that it simply so endemic, no one really sees it as unusual. Corruption from the top to the bottom is accepted.

The lack of collected taxes in Indonesia is nothing to do with that tax base being missing but is simply an endemic indicator of the corruption itself. The head tax guy in Jakarta doesn't have a tax number, as came out last week, and only 3% of people in Bali are registered. The tax system is structured so that people on low end incomes have no tax liability (until about RP1.400.000 a month), but the endemic corruption means that no-one pays tax, including those who can afford to.

However the depth of corruption means that those people who can least afford to are paying taxes in the form of graft.

No, the core issue is the corruption itself and making excuses for it simply accentuates the problem. I can't accept your argument I'm afraid.