Losers and Winners

Before the end of Dutch colonialism in West Papua, majority of Papuans were fishermen, gardeners, and hunters. It was different back then when Papuans were working in their respective job to support family economy or in short, they gathered food not for SALE. Back then, food wasn't hard to find, corps weren't hard to grow, and fishing wasn't challenged by outsider fishermen [Bugis people for example]. Simply tell, we [Papuans] didn't need anything related to money making business [wirausaha] as noted by the author.

What happens now is cultural impact from changes that are taking places without we control single inch of them. We weren't concerned about educating our people on how to create dynamic business as the answer for these changes back in the day. Now, there are competitions and we are in the losing side of them and look what you've conclude, "Papuan can't stand long to sell bakso?" "Papuan only concerns about making big bucks?" etc...Well, my friend, sure many of us are concerned now as you said and thank for that notice. Now, back to all type of cars you've mentioned. They are part of special autonomy in which some of us sees as a fortune but most of us see it as a curse. Special autonomy had it birth on the wake call of independent of West Papua. My heart tells me different when I see special autonomy. First, it can't be compared to how much money they put from National GDP to build things in Java Island, second, more money put on constructing roads, harbors, houses, and physical buildings and not even close to 8% they put into education and human resource development. Thank to our current leaders who successfully inform us differently, so we still live in darkness. Third, with these large amounts of money, they stimulate a new face of Papuan culture, upper and lower class of Papuan is created from this “sudden money”. What would be the impact? We are no longer trust our own people like we used to and tell me who will benefit from this classification? I don't know who but I am sure somewhere in Jakarta, whatever it is, it will benefit out of this. Fourth, it was proved that somehow OTSUS creates WINNERS and LOSERS between us. Let me tell you the impact, some people who are losers will say, "That's it, I am going to build a new province, so I could benefit from it and people are no longer waiting for the money from current province!" This is just a small impact! The biggest impact is that Papuans are divided into races, gender and Jakarta proudly announces, "ONLY SMALL AMOUNT OF PEOPLE WANT THE INDEPENDENT!" which I am sure by voting majority of us want independent [merdeka].

I hope these words will give you different direction in writing.

Response to http://charlesroring.wordpress.com/2008/04/15/orang-papua-lebih-tertarik-urus-uang-besar/