ACFTA: Indonesia's Next Agenda

Facing the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA), workers and employers stand on the same position. This is an unusual phenomenon.

Both are screaming for help facing tremendous consequences of the implementation of the free trade agreement. Indeed, the FTA’s impacts are tough, both for the industry and workers. Therefore, it is legitimate to ask: who did we think will benefit from the decision to join the ACFTA?
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Justice is Not a Choice

Modern economic theorists have drifted too far from the actual world. In the beginning, economics was predominated with two main themes: ethics and economic rationality. However, later theorists have too narrow focus of human as homo economicus that people are purely self-interested.

In this book, Sen brings back the idea that people care for others and observe social norms. Although the values of freedom from hunger, disease, indignity and discrimination are perhaps complex, they are not impossible to measure. Sen, the Nobel winning economist, wanted to put the long forgotten ethics, or in this case more precisely said as ‘social justice’, back in the economic debates along with alternative perspectives to the long dominant Rawlsian theory of justice. While omitting the three decades debates on the liberal or illiberal issues in Rawls, he proposes a processual and negotiable notion based on practical notion of rationality.
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Negara Tanpa Tanggung Jawab

Silih berganti pejabat publik telah didengar keterangan dan kesaksiannya oleh Panitia Khusus tentang Hak Angket Skandal Bank Century (Pansus). Dan semakin banyak yang didengar, semakin simpang siur pula kejelasan tentang skandal yang berkenaan dengan uang publik sebesar Rp. 6,7 trilyun tersebut.

Sejak mulanya memang telah dipenuhi oleh informasi yang bertentangan. Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono mengatakan bahwa dirinya tidak tahu menahu perihal penggelontoran dana talangan atas Bank Century pada November 2008 tersebut. Namun demikian, Menteri Keuangan (Menkeu) Sri Mulyani Indrawati mengatakan bahwa ia selalu memberikan laporan secara berkala kepada atasannya itu, terlebih karena menurutnya kala itu perekonomian Indonesia berada pada masa genting.

Tulisan saya di atas selengkapnya bisa dibaca di website Nasional Demokrat, pada link ini. Continue>>