Adam Air KI 574: a tragedy in Jakarta and Sulawesi

It has almost been a month since Flight KI 574 went missing. Now we have news that the black box has possibly been located but that the Indonesian authorities may need the help of other countries with more advanced technology to retrieve it from the sea bed. Unpleasant as this matter is, it at least gives the grieving families some closure of the fate of their loved ones.

Unfortunately there is not even a hint of any closure of the issue opened by the events surrounding KI 574: aviation safety, or the apparent lack of. In spite of President Susilo Bambang Yudhono ordering the Transport Minister to investigate all aspects of all airlines, there has been no apparent progress at all on this front.

The only development that the public knows about was some half baked threat with the ludicrous proposal that all airline executives and shareholders be held responsible for air crashes. At some point was also news that Adam Air would compensate the families of the victims Rp500 million for each victim.

But that is all. After nearly a month that has been the extent of non-progress that the Transport Minister has achieved. He couldn’t even, for starters, conduct a preliminary audit of Adam Air and other airlines maintenance record to let the public know that the Government is doing something about the situation. As it is, the Government is sending absolutely no messages whatever that it either cares or is doing anything concrete to address the issue of aviation (or for that matter any other public transportation) safety.

What is wrong with this picture? Certainly, it appears we have a minister of utmost incompetence, a President who’s quick off the mark in saying the right things and then not following up with the right actions and politicians who have difficulty telling the difference between their earlobes and their elbows, to the extent that it is not even a political issue.

But the greates blame, Unspun feels, must lie with the nation’s Press. In a culture of non acountability that stifles most of the public sector, the real hope for change and accountability must come from the Fifth Estate.

Yet this has not happened. Kompas, Bisnis Indonesia, The jakarta Post and the TV stations all make a great show of investigating the circumstances of the crash etc but they do not take their reporting far enough. Unspun would have thought that a reporter staked out at the entrance to the President and Transport Minister’s office everyday asking them what have they done so far to address the issue of aviation and public transportation safety would be standard operating procedure here. There are times that the Press can affect change only through the unsubtle art of door-stopping and of keeping the issue alive either by reporting on the progress or – what is more newsworthy in this case: the lack of progress even as planes keep falling off the skies, trains keep falling off their tracks and overloaded ferries keep sinking into the sea. The issue here, stupid, is the government’s action or non-action of a pressing issue -safety of aviation and public safety.

Yet the Press is so full of itself that it devotes precious column centimeters and airtime on the pontifications of its journalists and commentators. There is place for such ruminations but what Indonesia needs now is good, plain old-fashioned reporting. (BTW does anyone out there feel that the Indonesia newspapers are so all over the place that instead of ordering the news priorities for us and letting us know what are the important developments are taking place in the country all they do is confuse everyone?)