Major labor rally again, what to do?

I was stuck in a very bad traffic arrangement this morning. I was told on Monday about the series of workers rallies this week to protest government's plan to revise the labor law. But I thought it was over on Monday when tens of thousands of workers take to streets and have been promised by legislators that they will not amend the law.

So, I was surprised with another major rally this morning with even more crowd on their way to the parliament building. Why?

It seems that workers are upset with Vice President Jusuf Kalla's statement that government would move on with the amendment for the sake of attracting more investment. These workers are not dumb enough to read newspapers and they know exactly that labor problems only ranked seventh in various surveys about the 10 most pressing issues confronted by investors.

Top list issues are:

- Inefficient government bureaucracy: How many months the business people have to spend to get all the paperworks done? They could get that faster but at an unbelieavable price tag. Imagine how difficult to get the materials in or out from Indonesian ports? What cost?

- Lack of infrastructures: Government prefer to inject money into inefficienct Garuda Indonesia airlines or hundreds of loss-making state-owned enterprises than to build infrastructure. Even the state-owned social security company which collects the money from workers prefer to invest in Garuda Indonesia than to, among others, empower the workers capability. We prefer crony capitalists to build infrastructure no matter how long will it take.

- Local and national corruption: We're entering the huge shifting in corruption from the centralized system of corruption during Soeharto years to a decentralized one which means even bigger amounts squeezed at all levels of government system. We believe that tax and custom offices are the most corrupt, but none of officers have been named suspect. How come? We believe that corruption is there but without corruptors? Is it a ghost nation something?

Praise the workers for their peaceful rallies so far! But for how long?

Poor respond from the government may lead to a bigger rally than ever, scheduled for Friday. That would be a combination of Monday and Wednesday rallies. Well, you'd better stay at home, except that your office is close enough!

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