Happy Birthday Indonesia

On 17 August 1945, the people of Indonesia declared independence from the Japanese occupation and established the unitary state of the Republic of Indonesia.

Later, the Dutch, who occupied Indonesia from the 16th century until the Japanese came in 1942, tried to invade Indonesia again, but after four years of unsuccessful military actions, the they gave up.

Since 1950, Indonesia faced separatist movements by local people supported by foreign countries who either want to turn Indonesia into an Islamic country, or a Federal country, or a Communist country.
On 30 September 1965, seven high ranking Army officers were bloodily killed, and the Army accused that the Indonesian Communist Party were responsible for this.

On 11 March 1965, President Soekarno handed power to Army General Soeharto, who later became president and hold power for 32 years. Soeharto successfully maintained stability especially in the fields of Economy, Politics and Security because he was fully supported by Western countries like the USA, Australia, Japan and Western Europe. Besides, he built effective intelligence networks, special security agency, and maintained an Anti-Subversive Law which enables unlimited arrest without warrant. He limited the number of political parties into 3, Golkar, PDI & PPP which must adopt one ideology i.e Pancasila i.e. five principle: Belief in God, Unity, Democracy, Humanity and Social Welfare.

After the Reformasi (Reform) on 20 May 1998 Vice President Habibie replaced Soeharto as president. In 1999, Megawati’s PDI won 35% votes in the General Election, however she only became Vice President, and Abdurrahman Wahid became President. During his term, several changes were made like: deletion of Anti Subversive Law, allowing fanatic religious movements. Two years later, Megawati became President.
Since 2002, some fanatic people who claimed to be Muslim and want to force the adoption of Middle East tradition have carried out campaign of terrors by killing themselves and hundreds of innocent people (many were Muslims) in Bali, Poso, Ambon, and Jakarta.

In 2004, the first presidential election was held and Soesilo Bambang Yudoyono (SBY) won with 60%. But considering SBY’s Partai Demokrat only got 7% in the Parliamentary election, therefore his 5 years term seemed to be ‘shaky”. This is obvious because SBY must to rely on the support of Vice President Jusuf Kalla and his Golkar Party who has the majority 25% seats in Parliament.

Last week, the General Election Committee (KPU) announced SBY’s Partai Demokrat as winner of the Parliamentary Election with 20% votes, and SBY as winner of the Presidential election with 60.8% votes. Therefore, SBY will once again be the President of 235 million people of Indonesia as the world’s largest Muslim country and the third largest democracy.

Earlier, on 17 July two Suicide Bombers made twin attacks on Hotel JW Marriot and Hotel Ritz-Carlton Jakarta, killing five innocent people and more than 50 wounded. In three weeks, the Police successfully identified those responsible and killed or captured some of them.

Considering the above, I hope that the President would now be more confident in leading the people to overcome any problems created by anyone, individual or group, local or foreigners, whatever their basis (politic or religion). The best way would be to eliminate any reasons for people to commit suicide bombings or other crimes that is by creating many jobs and low cost education. For which purpose, a conducive condition must be created for business development, e.g. freedom from any fear, guaranteed security, so that business people would want to invest money in Indonesia.

Long live Indonesia, Happy 64th Birthday!

Image: Courtesy of Wikipedia