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News from Indonesia

We Are Weak

That sentence probably will be the most used sentence to humiliate and undermine Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY)’s image by his opponents. That will also fires up the nationalists and the chauvinists to react strongly to his speech. But, the fact said that sentence is true. Indonesia is indeed weak, since the Asian financial crisis and the US arms embargo to Indonesia, our military capabilities has been declining. In the past 12 years, most of Indonesia’s budget is used to improve social and economic conditions, and that means sacrificing military budget. In the past years, Indonesia military budget have never gone past 1% of the GDP. With no funds to procure new equipments and no access to spare parts because of the embargo, it is inevitable that military capabilities will drop. Somehow, TNI still manages to survive by using spare parts from available plane (cannibalism), buying overpriced parts from the black market, and creatively create home-made parts to replace the broken parts. Of course, using sub-standard parts and cannibalism practices leads to reduced overall readiness and general morale. While we cannot see operational readiness level because of national security, we could see the low morale in the TNI. From hundreds of motto available in the armed forces, recently, it has changed into one unofficial motto, “Tabah sampai akhir”, which means “Patient until the end”. Because that is all they can do when something goes wrong.

However, this would not last long, because in his speech during the graduation ceremony at Defense University in Salemba, Jakarta, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono announces a major military modernization. Here is a part of his speech:
“We are weak. Our military capability is one of the weakest among the world. We are even weaker than Singapore! How can we do our duty as the protector of peace and freedom as stated in the Undang-Undang Dasar 1945 in our current state? What we need is major modernization and major reorganization in the TNI. We must replace all of our aging equipments to reduce the massive maintenance cost and to reduce the needless loss of life to accidents. Surely, we could not do anything with our current military budget, so the first step is to increase our military budget. This is something we couldn’t do in the past, because now we have a strong economy, we have consistently expands our economy by 6-7% in recent years. With this situation a target of 1,5% of GDP by 2015 for our military budget is not an impossibility. Even though that the ideal military budget is 1,8% to 2,5% of GDP, I believe that we can manage with 1,5% for the time being.

Furthermore, I already gave TNI a special budget of $6,27 billion dollar in December 2011 to quicken the modernization process. To achieve the Minimum Essential Forces necessary to safeguard our nation, we will need participation from various factions. And here is where you came in, I have high hopes on you, the graduates of the Defense University, to help improve and construct local military-industrial complex. With strong military-industrial complex, we can finally be independent from our foreign reliance of arms and we can do our part in international politics.”

Jakarta Godfather Goes to Prison

Today, after 2 months of tense trials, finally John Kei is sentenced to 50 years in prison. While his arrest might not matters for the rest of Indonesia, his trials does. In the past, the weak link in the Indonesian law enforcement system is the Judicial System. Often the police caught criminals only to be sentenced months in prison, not years like stated in the laws. Some says those happened because the judges or the jury or the witness can be bribed, or they received intimidation from the suspect. Those rumors seem irrelevant now, even though there are explicit intimidation from John Key himself or his followers, that didn’t stop the judge from giving John Kei the maximum sentence possible. John Key is found guilty with premeditated murder, murder, and multiple beatings.

This event shows that both the police and the judiciary wil not pass this opportunity to get rid of organized crime in the nation. And this also shows that they are willing to uphold the law and risking themselves for the greater good. We hope that this will be the first step of the organized crime purge.

President Announces Massive Infrastructure Plan

Indonesia is one of the strongest economic powers in the world. This is reflected in its membership in the G20, MIKT, Next Eleven, VISTA, CIVETS, etc. And most of the economic analyst in the world agrees that Indonesia could be the next economic powerhouse and surpassing India and China in terms of economic growth. However, in the past year, Indonesia has never achieved double digit economic growth, it hasn’t even touched the 7% mark. The question of “why?” could be answered by looking into Indonesia’s problem. Their main problem is the lack of infrastructure, administrative inefficiency, flawed judiciary, and widespread corruption. All of these problem limits Indonesia’s economic growth by scaring potential investor, lowers profit margin, hinders company expansion, and other things. If Indonesia really want to be a global economic superpower, these problem have to be addressed. The first problem, infrastructure, might be the most problematic than the other. Currently, there are logistic bottleneck everywhere, from inadequate ports to small roads. Electricity is also a big problem, PLN, the government-owned energy company, does not have the capability to meet national electricity demands due to old equipment and insufficient power plants. Clearly, the government has to take action now to avoid economic slowdown.

Fortunately, the government also realizes that and decided to take action. Recently, they have unveiled the blueprint for Visi 2025, and a part of that plan is massive infrastructure building that involves road, rails, bridges, power plants, airport, seaport, power grid, and others. The plan divides Indonesia into 6 economic regions, namely Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Sulawesi, Bali-Nusa Tenggara, and Papua-Maluku. They estimated that the whole project would cost from $300 billion to $400 billion USD, half of Indonesia’s last year Gross Domestic Product. To reduce burden on government budget, they have decided to allow investments or funding from private companies, local or international. Some of these projects have already started from 2010 and some of the biggest projects are scheduled to be completed in 2024. There are a few projects that stand out from the rest of them, those projects are Sunda Strait Bridge, Malacca Strait Bridge, 4 Nuclear power plants project, and 3 International port construction to compete with Singapore and Malaysia.

(OOC: This is a precursor to all infrastructure program/news feed in the future)

Massive Reactions Against Australian demands of Free Papua

Yesterday, a massive demonstration happened in Jakarta and other cities in response to the recent Australian demands of “Free Papua”. An academician in Gunadarma University responded to the Australian demands with disgusts. “The Australian demands for human rights are ridiculous. They speak about human rights violation while they are a perpetrator of human right violation themselves? That’s hypocrisy. They talked about human rights in papua while they themselves are oppressing the native aborigines in the Northern Territories. They should tend to their problems first before telling other people how wrong they are. How can a sinner tells someone else that they are a sinner and they should repent?”

Here is a response from a spokesperson for Masyarakat Makassar Peduli Indonesia, “Australian government clearly disrespects our sovereignty as a nation. Finally they admitting themselves as a supporter of separatist action against Indonesia and a supporter of a terrorist organization. This action clearly violates international law.”

Papuans also comments on the issue: “Clearly, they does not differentiate ordinary Papuans and OPM, in places where OPM is not attacking, Papua is mostly a peaceful place. We go on with our daily lives peacefully. Certainly not oppressed like the Australians are saying. I believe they are misguided by the OPM members that’s seeking asylum in Australia.”

There are various response from various groups in the media, however, most of them saying the same thing. Australia has gone too far and disrespects Indonesia sovereignty as a nation. Although there are multiple negative remarks, the government has not released any statement regarding this issue.

President Releases Statement Regarding Papua

Earlier this morning, Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono releases a statement regarding Papua. He admits that human rights violation and excessive behaviors has been made by the police and the armed forces. He also announces that the perpetrators for human rights violation in Papua has already in custody and will be trialed and sentenced immediately. This announcement surprised many human activists in Indonesia, as they didn’t expect that the government would change their stance toward Papua this fast, they expected that it would take at least 6 months until the government are willing to admit their mistake and punishes those responsible.

The president also said that he would not tolerate any more human rights violation, and in order to do that, the government will setup human rights training program for all police and armed forces member. And to ensure that the training program can be successfully implemented, he invites foreign human rights organization as well as domestic human rights organization to participate in this program. This program is mandatory for all members of police and armed forces everywhere in Indonesia, Papua included.

the next day

The president announces another statement regarding Papua, he calls to the Free Papua Movement leaders to put down their arms and enter dialogue with the government. As an act of good faith, he is willing to let the Free Papua Movement chooses the time and place for the meeting. The dialogue will be between the government, represented by the president himself and a few members of his cabinet, the Free Papua Movement representatives, and various civilian representatives from all over Papua.

“This is a major step up for the government”, says Haris Azhar, Executive Coordinator for KontraS, one of the leading human rights organization in Indonesia. “Finally the government is willing to admit their approach in the past as a mistake and they are willing to start a dialogue with the FPM. This is what we have been fighting for the past years, and it seems that it finally works.”