Well, this isn’t the first time we have been here, is it? Stories that Mariam Kartikatresni had resigned / been fired from TBI have been a dime a dozen.

Regular readers of this blog will recall that Mariam was deposed as TBI Director in June 2011 and replaced by Pak Toni, the former head of IBM Indonesia. This was part of the long-running turf war between her and Ibu Ning, the septuagenarian head of USG. Ning had almost succeeded in forcing Mariam out as TBI Director back then, but Mariam had used her connections and fought back. After a few weeks, the grossly incompetent but well-connected Ibu Mariam was back in charge. A few months later she told one of the contributors to this blog, “I have been stabbed in the back many, many times since I got this job.”

In truth, Mariam was quite the expect at putting daggers in other people’s backs herself, but funnily enough she didn’t mention that part. A ruthless operator in every respect, she was always able to convince herself that her actions were justified.

That wasn’t the last time that Mariam suffered a temporary setback either. In 2013, after this blog exposed massive corruption and illegality in TBI, Mariam suffered another setback. She changed her Linked-In profile to Director of Testing at USG, a job which had previously been done by a one-person ‘department’. Her coveted title of TBI Director disappeared from her online profile, even though she had been consoled by being allowed to keep the word ‘director’ in her job title. Clearly, the multiple scandals and crises which she had brought on TBI were being punished.

Yet by 2014 she was back representing TBI at media events such as the belated opening of TBI Malang. She was also seen adopting various charitable poses in a painfully obvious attempt to salvage her reputation as a virtuous character. There was one shameless publicity stunt in which she was shown handing out freebies to impoverished becak (rickshaw) drivers in Malang. The more her corrupt business was in the spotlight, the more she endeavoured to paint herself as a selfless doer of good deeds. As always, she was only truly motivated to get off her backside when there would be cameras there and she could strike dramatic poses.

However, everyone knew that TBI was badly damaged by the allegations aired on this blog. There were more than 500 anonymous emails and posts, many of them abusive and some of them even threatening violence, if we didn’t shut down this blog. TBI approached Google and got the previous version of this blog blocked. They also got their lawyer to threaten legal action if we didn’t take this blog down. The corrupt authorities at TBI were enraged that their dirty secrets were out, and the fact that Mariam was the centre of the scandal could not have escaped anyone’s attention. There were angry denials that no one believed this blog anyway, but if that was the case why did TBI hire a lawyer to approach WordPress and order us to take it down? They were lying through their teeth and it was obvious. This blog had blown the lid off their dirty little scam-ridden school.

So when we heard about 9 months ago that Mariam had finally ‘resigned’ ie. been shown the door, we decided not to report it at first. She had fought her way back from oblivion several times in the past. After all, this was the woman had failed dismally as even school manager, running TBI Sudirman at a large loss, but then got promoted to TBI Director due her to who she knew. It was madness to count her out easily. Yet it appears she really has moved on. As of mid-2015 she was started striking dramatic new poses as the ‘Director’ of UTS: Insearch. (More on this soon). The vain, incompetent curse of TBI has finally been driven out, years of lies and broken promises finally catching up with her. For Mariam Kartikatresni, the worst thing ever to happen to TBI, this really is the end of the road.