In Harmonia Progressio*

Yesterday IA-ITB (ITB's alumni association) just held their conference to elect their new president. According to its official website, Hatta Rajasa won the election by collecting 4510 votes, followed by Triharyo Soesilo (2090) in the 2nd place and Betti Alisjahbana (1806) in the 3rd place.

Hatta Rajasa is already known as a bureaucrat since becaming a minister in SBY's cabinet. He was an oil drilling businessman and a politician affiliated to National Mandate Party (PAN), member of coalition supporting SBY's government. Hatta graduated from petroleum engineering, class of 73. Triharyo Soesilo is a son of late Soesilo Soedarman, one of the ministers during Soeharto's era. Graduated from chemical engineering, class of 77. Now he is the CEO of PT Rekayasa Industri, a national industrial corporation that encourages innovations of local-made industries and reducing country's dependency to imported goods. Betti Alisjahbana graduated from Architecture, class of 79. Currently she is the CEO of IBM Indonesia. She is claimed to be the first woman to lead a regional IBM representative.

I myself didn't give my vote because I had to come to work yesterday, for the whole day, assisting BATAN's officers (turned out that one of the officers is my senior, physics class'79, and she didn't vote either) doing their bi-yearly calibration of our linear accelerator. Even if I had a chance to go to the voting venue, I still had not decided on whom to vote. My 'community' strongly recommended to vote Hatta Rajasa, however, til now, I'm still in big doubt of his commitment leading IA, knowing that he is now already a bureaucrat, who has to put public issues in the first place. His predecessors was also bureaucrats (Laksamana Sukardi and Cacuk Sudarijanto) and they brought nothing significant for the sake of IA-ITB. I still have no idea why 'they' support Hatta Rajasa for president, and don't have time to find out.


But he is our leader now, and we'll just see what he will bring for us.

*) "to progress in harmony": the evergreen ITB's slogan.