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Oppose planned electricity hikes - take power or remain in poverty!

People's Democratic Party Statement - February 2, 2006

The people are again facing an increasingly difficult economic situation. Following the fuel price increases at the end of last year, this time the people will be confronted with a new problem - the government's plan to increase basic electricity charges (TDL). Prosperity is not what the people have found under the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Vice President Jusuf Kalla - as they promised during their election campaign last year. Rather it has actually been an increasingly real decline in the people's living standards. No longer do the people hope for any improvements to the their welfare. Instead there is an ocean of poverty, thousands of children dropping out of school, millions of unemployed as a result of mass dismissals, the destruction of domestic industries as a consequence of increased production costs, a decline in the public's purchasing power and the certainty that this crisis will be even more prolonged.

The burden of production costs as a consequence of the high price of oil on world markers and the limitations on government subsides again appears be the government's justification to increase TDL. It is as if the state-owned electricity company PT PAN and the government are blind to what is happening within PLN itself such as the massive losses on the electricity grid that are as high as 12-14 percent per year and the corruption committed by high-ranking PLN officials themselves.

Increases to TDL will in itself kill off domestic middle- and small-scale industries that should be protected by the state. Conversely, it is the owners of big capital that will further benefit from these measures. With the destruction of national industry it will of course have a huge impact on domestic productive forces. Mass dismissals will take place all over the country as domestic industries fall into bankruptcy. In a situation such as this the owners of large capital will further strengthen their supremacy of economic and political power with the annexation of strategic domestic industries.

This is a continuation of a plot by neoliberal forces that is being assisted by the puppet government of Yudhoyono and Kalla: So that private investors can enter and reap profits from the domestic energy market. In the end, PLN will be forced to by its energy from the private sector at higher prices. Not only will this reduce PLN's purchasing power but it will also castrate and destroy the people's productive forces in the electricity sector as a result of the control by the private sector.

It is because of this, that in reality these increase are a continued effort by the state to consolidate and apply a liberal economy based on the free market under the direction of international capital that will totally remove the most basic rights of the people.

If the Yudhoyono government genuinely wishes to work hard and have a populist economic vision, of course there are still many other means that could be used without having to increase TDL that will have such a negative impact on the national economic system.

It could improve efficiency at PLN by:

1. Ensuring transparency at PLN and eliminating corruption down to its roots.
2. Minimise losses at PLN down to the lowest point. (An effort to reduce losses is important because it will result in significant energy conservation. Based on calculations, a one percent reduction in losses is equivalent to saving 750 billion rupiah. Savings as large as this could be used to make up the blowout in the cost of fuel purchases by PLN.)
3. Seriously development of generators that use alternative sources of energy. At the very least the government could minimalise costs by using coal.

1. The nationalisation of vital assets, particularly in the energy field, to improve the prosperity of the people.
2. The arrest of the corrupters and the seizure of their assets obtain by corruption and that this be used to improve the welfare of the people.

1. Demonstrate across all sectors: workers, farmers, the urban poor and students by protesting at government institutions and the House of Representatives.
2. Hold a national boycott on payment of electricity bills if the government persists in increasing TDL.
3. For all small- and medium-size industries to unite with the people and the democratic movement to resist this new style of imperialism (neoliberalism) and the domestic capitalist bureaucrats.
4. For all political and democratic organisations to close ranks in struggle as a strategic opposition to resist imperialism and its domestic lackeys. Form a national united front to build a new force that is independent, democratic, populist, clean, modern and international.

Jakarta, February 2, 2006

General Chairperson, Dita Indah Sari
General Secretary, Agus Jabo Priyono

Central Leadership Committee of People's Democratic Party (KPP-PRD)

Form more information contact Zely Ariane, PRD Department of International Relations.

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Web site: www.prd-online.or.id

[Translated by James Balowski.]