BRR or the Badan Rehabilitasi dan Rekonstruksi is the Indonesian government agency responsible for the tsunami rebuilding. Earlier this month, Wall Street Journal (11/02/05) published an article about BRR – how it was set up, the support it received from McKinsey and about its Director – Pak Kuntoro (a Stanford alum). Just last week, in local newspapers, there was an exposé of sort, publicly announcing Kuntoro and senior official in BRR’s salary level. Apparently Kuntoro makes 75 million Rupiahs a month (about $7,500) which is about 12 million more than the President of Indonesia’s officially published salary. The justification being BRR is handling millions and millions of reconstruction funding, and with the culture of corruption that is so pervasive in this country, BRR officials' (from the very top to the very bottom) salary must be higher than the normal bureaucrat in order to prevent corruption. Does this logic make sense?
On the note of Pak Kuntoro being a Stanford alum. I learned something new about Indonesian economic history the other day. In the 1960s, Indonesia was on the brink of famine and disaster and a group of US-educated Indonesian economists pulled the nation out of economic crisis which led to 3 decades of growth under Suharto. This group of economists - most of them Cal Bears were referred to as the Berkeley Mafia. Go Bears!
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