Poki: Your foods being cut down, okay! Efficiency
Cat: I'll soon be scrawny
Poki: Quiet! The important thing is you just go along with it! Not carry on about it later
Cat: It is indeed difficult to talk to your boss, never mind if the boss is also armed...
There are widespread concerns over proposed revisions to the Indonesian Military Law (UU TNI) that could allow active TNI officers to become involved in business activities. Trade unions for example say that many employers already use the military to provide security for businesses and the direct involvement of active military officers will further threaten workers' rights.
As it is, the TNI is already involved in supporting President Prabowo Subianto's flagship free nutritious meals (MBG) program and food self-sufficiency mega-projects in Papua, and in early February Prabowo appointed Major General Novi Helmy Prasetya as the CEO of the State Logistics Agency (Bulog).
This follows a gathering of around 200 TNI colonels in January who were personally addressed by the president before being given a crash course by the Defence Ministry on business management and finances focusing on energy and food security – Prabowo's two priority programs – in preparation for them to manage state owned enterprises (BUMN) and regional government enterprises (BUMD).
And in July last year – when the revisions to the TNI first became public – the Head of the TNI's Legal Development Agency (Kababinkum), Admiral Kresno Buntoro, said that TNI Headquarters was proposing that soldiers should be allowed to be involved in business activities as they were during the New Order dictatorship of former president Suharto.
Under the current law, Law Number 24/2004 on the TNI, soldiers are strictly prohibited from owning or running any kind of business as stipulated under Article 39 Letter c. Buntoro said that they are proposing that this article be removed in the revised law.
"This may be controversial, but Sir, Madam, my wife has a small shop at home. If this [article] is applied, then I'll be punished", said Buntoro at an event titled Public Hearing on the TNI/Polri Bills organised by the Coordinating Security Ministry at the Borobudur Hotel in Jakarta on July 11.
Buntoro said that if his wife owns a business, in this a small shop, he cannot help but get involved in the business. "Soldiers are prohibited from being involved in business activities. Like it or not, I'll get involved. Because I take her shopping and the like. Does this then exist?", asked Buntoro.
However military observer Made Supriatma from the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) says that the argument that if a soldier's wife or family member conducts business then the soldier will inevitably be involved is a very narrow and manipulative view being put forward in order to get Article 39 Letter c removed from the law.
According to Supriatma, this is not the issue but rather what happens when a soldier uses their position in the TNI to conduct business, giving the example of a soldier named First Sargent Sarijo selling meat sate in Yogyakarta after working hours.
"Are they conducting business? Yes. But are they using their position as a soldier to do business? Obviously not. But what about a colonel who has 40 hectares of oil palm plantations", asked Supriatma.
