Jakarta, IO – There seems to be a competition going on for good cause between the US FED Jerome Powell and his colleagues, and Christian Laggard of the ECB, with her colleagues across the Atlantic. This time the ECB seems to be a little ahead in the game of controlling inflation, and the Board members have started talking about programs to cut interest rates. Meanwhile, Jerome Powell still feels the need to make an official statement that the fight against inflation looks promising. This is certainly the good news that everyone likes to hear and keep healthy.
The markets must also respond to the development with enthusiasm, including the labor market. On this last point, in the past the US had been more encouraging than its counterpart across the Atlantic. Surely, this is also a good song to hear in emerging markets, including that of Indonesia, which always welcomes healthy developments in advanced economies.
It is even better that China President Xi Jinping was recently reported to be an enthusiastic Salesman-in-Chief, in a meeting with a group of American CEOs and businessmen in Beijing. In short, from different angles the development in economic relations looks encouraging, and we hope it will endure. Meanwhile, the situation in Israel does not look like it is progressing for the better. PM Netanyahu with his far-right supporters must face pressures from EU leaders and the US regarding the so high toll in human lives already, pressing for an immediate cease-fire, which was vetoed in the UN Security Council by Russia and China.
So, these are still things that need to be solved to complete the ingredients of a good environment for global progress. Let us work together to ensure that this important time for all major denomination of religions, when the Moslems are preparing for IED, the Jews for PASSOVER, and the Christians for EASTER, allow us all to be united in prayers to the Almighty that ultimately PEACE will indeed descend and become a reality for everyone to celebrate and enjoy. At least it is no harm to try, right?
Now the US is getting closer to a very important democratic exercise: the casting of votes to elect a new President. Let us hope that all parties will play fair and clean and that by early November a new President is successfully elected without any dispute of the 2020-type. In November, Indonesia will also have a new President and Vice President to start their administration, executing the programs they promised during the campaign. I observe that good will is there; that will hopefully make the execution of programs run smoothly for the nation to benefit.
I have been making comments that the waiting period for the new President and Vice President to start working is a bit too long, since it is hard to imagine that the incumbent will do anything drastic in a relatively short time; so why not just stop here and pass the leadership immediately to the new ones? In the meantime, the new ones must already be eager to start working at their jobs, right? Sorry to have to say this, but the US practice looks all right to me: when an election is done in November, the inauguration occurs in the second week of January. Well, this is only a note. Who am I to complain? Just do it.
But, apparently some parties are still not ready to accept the result of a vote count, as announced by the Election Commission on March 20. The Secretary General of the PDI-P Party, Mr. Hasto Karyo just brought a protest case to the Constitutional Court, saying that the Election should be repeated in a Second Round, eliminating the currently winning pair, Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka, because Gibran was there illicitly, pushed by President Joko Widodo, just because he is his son. I am not a lawyer, but to me this is indeed a laughable argument, especially if the Secretary General is a lawyer.
He wanted to simply scratch those names with his legal argument, irrespective of the fact that in the vote count Prabowo accumulated more than 58 per cent of the total of votes, that even if the two other candidates’ votes were combined, it would still not even come close to what Prabowo received. And he argued this is a democratic process? Wow, what a bizarre argument indeed. Did not he realize that Mr. Ganjar Pranowo, his candidate, managed to go downhill, his vote declining from 40 percent at the beginning of the campaign period to 16 percent at the end of it, after his antique comments and questions he launched during the Presidential Debates? Come on, just be a bit reasonable. And now a second-round election barring the winner from participating? With such a game anyone could become our President, I am afraid. I better stop here, as this is becoming unbearable to me.