I've lived in Indonesia for a year and a half now and can say a lot of the things on here are true for Java the main island, not Bali which is the only island most people ever visit (for good reason).
To start, corruption is incredible in the government that is focused on getting rich and not actually improving the lives of the citizens. The government hides its history including it's genocide of Chinese and suspected Communist Party members, and lies about a made up grand militaristic fight for independence when it was more of an abandoned colony.
The people have some of the unhealthiest habits. Almost every local dish is fried and chain smoking can start at an infant age. The infamous YouTube smoking baby is from here. There is cigarette smoke everywhere and people aren't educated enough to know it's bad for their health.
Garbage is thrown into the nearest river as means of disposal or burned creating poisonous plastic smoke. The local rivers are also toilets and baths for the poorer people.
The streets are pretty bad with lots of traffic and pollution in most major cities. There is an incredible amount of honking: honking at other cars, pedestrians, people on the roadside, animals etc. Throw in blaring calls to prayer, wedding, and a terrible invention called dangdut music and it's one of the loudest places ever.
The people can be the nicest most welcoming people or the most ignorant, selfish, uneducated people with a high opinion of themselves. Work ethic is not high due to corruption and people think they achieve things without working hard. There are even ghost legends to support this such as the Tuyul which is a small child ghost that steals from the poor to give to the rich. Jealousy is more rampant than I've ever seen in another country and successes are often blamed on Tuyul, witchcraft, or corruption. Also most people are afraid of the dark and sleep with either the T.V. or lights on.
All of this can only be expected really with a disintegrating school system where learning just isn't taking place. It's sad really. I believe this is only not higher on the list for the fact that so little people actually ever travel to or experience the real Indonesia. The country needs a serious change starting with education.
28 September 2016
indon is stupid because the work hard instead of work smart
I alway amazed why indon always find a way to do things the hard way. So let us compare between work hard indon style and work smart Malaysian style.
Gaining independence
Indon has to fought hard with so many casualties to gain independence why Malaysian independence the same thing by speech.
Gayang Malaysia
Since 1960 indon has yelled this mantra with no effect what so ever and Malaysian has moved forward, indon still living in nostalgic mood.
Gaining independence
Indon has to fought hard with so many casualties to gain independence why Malaysian independence the same thing by speech.
Gayang Malaysia
Since 1960 indon has yelled this mantra with no effect what so ever and Malaysian has moved forward, indon still living in nostalgic mood.
23 September 2016
Hack Apa BABU?
Taik kucing la indon, pandai cakap je!
Kalau pandai sangat pasal kau tak hack blog aku nih?!
haa hack laa.
Dulu jadi KOELI Belanda, sekarang jadi BABOE Malaysia...hahaha
Korang juga yg bodoh, jadi rakyat yg bodoh dan terus dibodohi sama pemerentah kalian..indonsialan!
http://blogtutorial1.blogspot.co.id/2012/05/hacker-indonesia-menyerang-500-situs.html
Kalau pandai sangat pasal kau tak hack blog aku nih?!
haa hack laa.
Dulu jadi KOELI Belanda, sekarang jadi BABOE Malaysia...hahaha
Korang juga yg bodoh, jadi rakyat yg bodoh dan terus dibodohi sama pemerentah kalian..indonsialan!
http://blogtutorial1.blogspot.co.id/2012/05/hacker-indonesia-menyerang-500-situs.html
PENCURI - Dua buruh indon dalang pecah rumah
Serdang: Polis menahan dua buruh warga Indonesia dipercayai terbabit dalam kegiatan pecah rumah dan curi motosikal dalam dua serbuan di daerah berkenaan, kelmarin.
Ketua Polis Daerah Serdang, Asisten Komisioner Megat Mohd Aminuddin Megat Alias berkata, tangkapan dilakukan susulan kejadian pecah rumah yang berlaku di Taman Jinna, Sri Kembangan, jam 4.30 petang, Selasa lalu.
Katanya, hasil risikan dan maklumat polis menyerbu sebuah rumah pangsa di Taman Bukit Serdang, di sini, jam 8.30 pagi dan berjaya menahan seorang lelaki warga Indonesia berusia 30-an.
"Polis turut merampas peralatan pecah rumah dan menemui motosikal model Yamaha Ego yang dilaporkan hilang di daerah ini, Sabtu lalu.
"Polis turut membuat pemeriksaan di sebuah rumah milik suspek pertama di Taman Sri Serdang dan menemui komputer riba serta empat unit telefon bimbit disyaki hasil kegiatan pecah rumah," katanya pada sidang media di Ibu Pejabat Polis Daerah Serdang, di sini, hari ini.
Menurutnya, dua suspek terbabit kini direman untuk siasatan lanjut mengikut Seksyen 457 Kanun Keseksaan.
13 June 2014
Here’s Why Some Indons Are Spooked by This Presidential Contender
Prabowo Subianto is vying to become President of the world's most populous Muslim nation. But many feel he has yet to adequately explain rights abuses that took place when he was head of the country's special forces 16 years ago
Some Indonesians refuse to forget. It’s been 16 years since retired general Suharto relinquished power, but relatives of those who perished or disappeared under his oppressive rule continue to stage protests at Freedom Square in the capital Jakarta every Thursday. Maria Katarina Sumarsih has only missed 12 such gatherings over the past eight years. Her son, a humanitarian volunteer during the 1998 student uprising, was shot dead when he attempted to tend to a wounded protester. Sumarsih is still waiting for justice to be meted out to those responsible.
“Indonesia is the third biggest democracy in the world, but I and all my friends here feel we’ve been abandoned,” she says, adding that she’s afraid the situation could get worse. “If Prabowo becomes President, the population should be prepared to become victims of human-rights violations again.”
Indonesia has come a long way since Suharto. The military has been pushed out of the political scene, the freedoms of press and speech have vastly improved, and July 9 will mark the first time the country replaces one directly elected President with another. For human-rights advocates, however, a huge question mark hangs over the head of one of the leading candidates, Prabowo Subianto
Toward the end of Suharto’s rule, military units abducted and tortured 23 democracy activists, 13 of whom have not been seen since. Riots followed, leading to over a thousand deaths and scores of rapes. One of the men accused of having orchestrated these abuses is Prabowo — then commander of the special forces.
If Indonesia has come far since Suharto’s rule, so has Prabowo. When Suharto fell in May 1998, Prabowo was head of the army strategic-reserve command, but quickly found himself discredited and discharged from the military, upon which he went into self-imposed exile. Today, he’s refashioned himself as a decisive political leader, the champion of rich and poor alike, and a well-oiled campaign has catapulted him to social-media fame, with a Facebook following that trails only the likes of Barack Obama and Narendra Modi. While Prabowo has admitted to abducting nine activists in 1998, he denies wrongdoing, insisting that these individuals were released and that he was only following orders. He has never been officially questioned, and many Indonesians turn a blind eye to the disputed episode.
“Young people just idolize a leader that looks strong and assertive, they don’t even have the imagination to understand what it was like to live under an authoritarian leader,” says Margiyono, a student activist during the Suharto years. Prabowo’s Great Indonesia Movement Party, or Gerindra, has even managed to attract some former abductees to its camp, but for people like Margiyono, the possibility of Prabowo becoming national leader brings back dark memories.
Agitating for East Timorese independence and Indonesian democracy in the 1990s, Margiyono clashed with paramilitaries believed to be under Prabowo’s command on several occasions, and his flatmate was one of the abductees who never returned. Earlier this year, Margiyono left his job in journalism to start a support organization for Prabowo’s presidential rival Joko Widodo, the Jakarta governor popularly known as Jokowi — not because Margiyono is a Jokowi fan, but because he’s afraid of what would happen if Prabowo wins.
“[Prabowo is] Suharto’s son-in-law, they’re ideologically the same,” he says. “The problem is that under Suharto, formal education taught us what it was like to live under [Suharto's autocratic predecessor] Sukarno, but [today's] reform government doesn’t teach us about the democracy situation under Suharto.”
A recent poll by the Indonesian Survey Institute discovered that about 70% of respondents were unaware of the allegations against Prabowo or his discharge from the army. Consequently, he presents to the public those aspects of his military past that suit him. On the campaign trail, he plays the part of the strongman. He has been known to enter a stadium, packed with supporters and uniformed party cadres, in semifascist splendor astride a handsome horse. And he frequently peppers his speeches with anti-Western statements and criticism of multinationals, styling himself as a reborn Sukarno, even dressing like modern Indonesia’s founding father. His supporters sport T-shirts featuring a trendy graphic image of Prabowo wearing Sukarno’s favored peci, or traditional cap.
However, pressure is mounting on Prabowo to clarify his role in the troubles of 1998. A leaked document is currently circulating on the Internet, saying that Prabowo was discharged, among other things, for insubordination after ordering special-forces units to arrest and detain activists. Separately, a group of human-rights advocates has launched a court challenge aimed at bringing Prabowo and others to trial. A former major general, Kivlan Zen, has also come forward, stating that he knew who abducted the missing activists, as well as where they are buried, but he has yet to be officially questioned.
“This new fact gives a political opportunity for us human-rights activists,” says Rafendi Djamin, director of the Human Rights Working Group. “There should be action from the relevant state institutions.”
Worryingly, in 2009 the Indonesian parliament voted in favor of setting up an extraordinary court to deal with the allegations against Prabowo, but President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has yet to sign off on the proposal.
“It’s a serious issue that Prabowo has been recognized as a presidential candidate before settling these allegations of crimes against humanity,” says Rafendi. “There is a need to clarify this as soon as possible, not only for the relatives of the victims, but for the whole country, to make sure this kind of crime doesn’t happen again.”
Dodi Ambardi, executive director of the Indonesian Survey Institute, believes chances of such clarification are slim. His institute conducted a survey of people who know about the allegations against Prabowo, and found that the majority were willing to forgive him.
“To a large extent, the human-rights allegations are a middle-class issue,” says Dodi. “Prabowo attracts many voters locally because he’s seen as the candidate of the Islamic community and because he presents himself as a national hero.”
The Gerindra party’s savvy campaigning has managed to secure a diverse voter base. Coalition building with Islamic parties has won it the religious nod. The co-opting of nationalist symbols, like the mythical garuda bird, ticks nationalist boxes, as does Prabowo’s military and his claims to an aristocratic lineage. A video made by party supporters to Pharrell Williams’ viral hit “Happy” gave his image a modern gloss, as did his appearance on the recent final ofIndonesian Idol to hand out prizes.
Fadli Zon, the deputy chairman of Gerindra, says the allegations of rights abuses are outdated.
“These human-rights cases aimed at defaming Prabowo are continuously recycled,” he tells TIME. “But people are smart, so it will have no influence on our campaign.”
Campaign managers are even happy to play off the accusations. Gerindra has published a book called Kidnapped by Prabowo, describing it as “a story based on real events,” and featuring a striking cover of a frightened man being grabbed from behind. When readers open the book, however, they learn that this is not an account of activist abductions but a parable of how an ordinary man is brought into Prabowo’s life, and gets to see the great man from behind the scenes.
Noudhy Valdryno, the head of Gerindra’s social-media team, says he relishes the opportunity to explain to Indonesia’s digital-savvy youth that in 1998 Prabowo was a military leader defending the security interests of his country. “If they start arguing with us, we get the chance to explain more, so it’s a win-win situation for us,” he says.
As a result of this clever and aggressive campaigning, Jokowi’s once gaping lead has been reduced to 10% with only a month left to go, and Prabowo’s repeated assertions of his innocence could further narrow that gap. On Monday night, as the two presidential candidates squared off in their first televised debate, the notoriously temperamental Prabowo got emotional when answering a question on his human-rights position from Jusuf Kalla, Jokowi’s running mate.
“I understand where you’re going with this: whether I would be able to protect human rights because I am a human-rights violator,” said Prabowo. “Is that what you’re getting at, sir? Mr. Jusuf Kalla, I take responsibility, and my conscience is clear: I am the strongest defender of human rights in this republic.”
Many Indonesians believe him. ----STUPID DUMB INDONS, as always
28 May 2014
Indon Celaka
Lagu
indon, patut diganti liriknya, dengan kata-kata antara lain
seperti berikut :
Indonesia raya celaka, celaka; Kayalah penguasanya, kayalah elitnya, miskinlah tanahnya, miskinlah rakyatnya semuanya, celaka, celaka. Mamposlah indon semuaanya...
Indonesia raya celaka, celaka; Kayalah penguasanya, kayalah elitnya, miskinlah tanahnya, miskinlah rakyatnya semuanya, celaka, celaka. Mamposlah indon semuaanya...
Indon Tegas
Probowo Tegas Taik
Gerindra, like its emblem of the Garuda (the bird on which Lord Vishnu rode), is just a vehicle; it is designed to ferry its god to the presidential palace, an earthly paradise for worshippers of state power. Prabowo and his billionaire brother created the political party so that he could run for president. He has had no patience for the day-to-day wrangling of law-making and the rule of law: he has not served as a member of parliament. He has no experience with government, only with the military, business, and the business of the military (as an international arms trader). His entire political career has been an exercise in personal aggrandisement.
You are no Soekarno
Sukarno’s two bodies
– 26 May 2014Posted in: Indonesia
Votes
John Roosa explains how both Prabowo and Jokowi are advertising
themselves as the legatees of Indonesia’s first President, Sukarno.
……………
Which Sukarno imitator would you prefer? The fellow wearing the black fez, just like the one Sukarno wore, or the fellow professing Sukarno’s slogans?
This is the choice facing Indonesia’s voters in the July 9 presidential election. The race between Prabowo Subianto and Joko Widodo (Jokowi) pits one version of Sukarno against another version. Both candidates advertise themselves as the authentic legatees of the country’s first president. Why are they appropriating the symbols and words of a long-dead president? Suharto, the army general who deposed Sukarno, spent his 32 years in power discrediting him as a relic of the “Old Order.” Why is his ghost still hovering around Indonesian politics?
Prabowo, the former lieutenant general and black ops specialist, likes the visual associations: his microphones are of a 1950s design like those Sukarno was photographed with; his white jacket is like the one Sukarno wore; the backdrops behind his photo-ops contain Sukarno portraits. His campaign managers claimed the large house they are using as their headquarters, Rumah Polonia, was once occupied by Sukarno. In fact, it was occupied by one of his wives, Yurike Sanger, and Sukarno only dropped in for the occasional conjugal visit.
The tempo doeloe (old times) style of the campaign launch at Sanger’s
former house went to the head of Amien Rais, a leader of an allied political
party, who took the microphone to improbably suggest that Prabowo’s heavy-set,
droopy-cheeked face resembled Sukarno’s. Rais was like a drunken
father of the bride at a wedding party as he watched his protégé, Hatta Rajasa,
a faceless political operative, step forward as Prabowo’s running mate. Hatta
was chosen because he knows more about the secrets of the ruling oligarchs than
just about anyone else: he has been a cabinet minister for the last 13 years and
Coordinating Minister of Economic Affairs for the last four. That his name is
the same as Sukarno’s co-proclaimer of independence is just serendipitous.
Prabowo’s campaign managers hoped to take advantage of the coincidence by using
the building where Sukarno and Hatta wrote the declaration of independence in
1945 as the site of the campaign launch. They were disappointed to learn that it
is a protected landmark.
Prabowo’s invocation of Sukarno’s spirit seems bizarre given that he is the ideological child of Suharto’s New Order and the biological child of a famous enemy of Sukarno’s. His father, a Dutch-educated economist, Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, collaborated with the CIA to sabotage Sukarno’s government and establish a parallel government in Sumatra in the late 1950s. The attempt failed and Sumitro was labeled a traitor. Prabowo (born 1951) partly grew up outside the country in places such as Singapore and Kuala Lumpur where his family lived in exile. Sumitro only returned in 1968, after Sukarno had been driven out of power and kept under house arrest (at the house of his Japanese wife, Ratna Sari Dewi). Back in Jakarta, Sumitro became the Minister of Trade and a father figure to the US-trained economists of the so-called “Berkeley mafia” who were helping engineer the New Order’s great natural resource sell-off. Prabowo’s family owes its fortune to the Suharto regime.
What Prabowo sees in Sukarno is the image of a powerful, charismatic leader. He admires the Sukarno who emasculated the political parties and ruled by decree during the Guided Democracy years (1959-66). Prabowo has said that he would like to create a new version of Guided Democracy. His political philosophy from the 1990s, when he started speaking to journalists, to the present consists of essentially a single point: Indonesia needs a strong leader. His speeches and his party’s literature revolve around this point. Gerindra, like its emblem of the Garuda (the bird on which Lord Vishnu rode), is just a vehicle; it is designed to ferry its god to the presidential palace, an earthly paradise for worshippers of state power. Prabowo and his billionaire brother created the political party so that he could run for president. He has had no patience for the day-to-day wrangling of law-making and the rule of law: he has not served as a member of parliament. He has no experience with government, only with the military, business, and the business of the military (as an international arms trader). His entire political career has been an exercise in personal aggrandisement.
Gerindra’s manifesto characterises the post-Suharto political system as “liberal democracy” that is not in accordance with the “national culture.” Electoral democracy is decentered and dissolute; it has made the body politic flaccid, preventing a “strong national leadership” from standing erect. In Prabowo’s mind, everything about a country – the quality of its economic system, culture, and international standing – depends on the “leadership factor.” The solution for all of Indonesia’s ills is a “strong national leadership,” meaning himself, the great one riding the $300,000 Lusitano horse.
Prabowo’s version of the Führerprinzip cannot be equated to Sukarno’s without anachronism. Sukarno built a cult around his leadership at a time when the nation was in an existential crisis: the Constitutional Assembly was deadlocked on the basic principle of the state, with the Islamic political parties insisting on an Islam as the basic principle; army colonels in the outer islands had set up a rival government with help from Prabowo’s father and the Dulles brothers; armed partisans of an Islamic state terrorized West Java, even in areas close to the capital; the country was under martial law; cabinets had trouble lasting for more than a few months. And so on. Sukarno, as a product of the mass struggle for independence, presented himself as the “tongue” of the people, their voice, not their backbone or élan vital. His July 5, 1959 Dekrit was a last resort, an unwanted outcome. This authoritarian polity was not what he had worked towards since becoming a political leader in the 1920s, even as he put the best face on it.
Prabowo is condemning “liberal democracy” at a time when the Indonesian state is not facing an emergency, when much can be done to expand the rule of law and democratic rights. His ideas have not changed since he was part of Suharto’s praetorian guard. A journalist interviewed him in 1997: “He quotes academic studies that claim that a viable democracy can only be maintained after a society reaches a per capita GNP of around $2,000 (Indonesia is at $940). In the meantime, he says, there must be stability to achieve a basic economic level of welfare.” One knows it’s a fool’s game when the goalposts keep moving: Indonesia’s GDP per capita today is about $3,500 but supposedly it is still not enough to have a “liberal democracy.”
Prabowo fills his speeches with the populist, anti-imperialist rhetoric that has been the stock-in-trade of the Sukarnoist political tradition. He condemns the privatization of state-owned companies, deregulation pushed by the IMF, and the money politics behind Indonesian elections. According to him, foreign corporations, neoliberal policy wonks, and kleptocrats conspire to exploit the sweated labor of Indonesian peasants and workers. It is hard to take the rhetoric seriously coming from a wealthy capitalist who has been negligent in paying his own workers. Gerindra would not exist without the infusions of money from his brother, Hashim, the 32nd richest man in Indonesia according to Forbes. (If Prabowo becomes president one can be sure Hashim will quickly rise in the rankings.) Prabowo’s opportunistic use of the Sukarnoist rhetoric has occasionally landed him in trouble. Because of his promises to reassert state ownership over unnamed foreign-owned businesses, Hashim had to issue a press release to assure spooked investors that his brother has no plans to repeat Sukarno’s nationalization policies.
For the sake of historical accuracy, he should build his campaign around Suharto nostalgia. Prabowo wants to return the country to some form of the pre-engineered electoral system and unaccountable presidency of Suharto’s time. The problem he faces is that Suharto lacked one thing that he needs to win elections: the image of a virile, charismatic public speaker forcefully denouncing enemies and rallying “the masses.” Suharto’s public image – the quiet, reserved, non-ideological administrator – was designed to be the antithesis of Sukarno’s. Prabowo is designing a new mutant creature, transplanting the wild, romantic heart of Sukarno into the stiff, rotting corpse of Suhartoism.
If Prabowo invokes Sukarno to legitimate his retrograde, personalistic politics, Jokowi invokes Sukarno to legitimate a polar opposite political agenda. Jokowi, the choice of Sukarno’s biological daughter, Megawati (whose mother is another wife, Fatmawati), to be her party’s presidential candidate, represents a clear break with the existing politics of rent-seeking. As mayor of Solo (2005-12) and governor of Jakarta (2012-14), he cracked down on the civil servants’ bribe-taking and embezzling, thereby freeing up money to be spent on public goods. The progress in just two years in dealing with Jakarta’s problems, such as flooding, traffic congestion, lack of green space, and poor public health, has been impressive, especially when compared with the passivity of previous governors. Jokowi repeatedly states that the government has enough revenue to finance social welfare projects, as long as the revenue is not diverted into private pockets. He has shown what can be done when civil servants are serving the public.
Jokowi, unlike Sukarno and Prabowo, is not given to grandstanding. His speeches, effective and straightforward, have no flair. For his campaign slogan, he has borrowed Sukarno’s formula of Trisakti – the three sakti-s. Sakti connotes a kind of sacred or magical power. In a 1963 speech, Sukarno called for Indonesia to be “standing on its own feet” in its politics, economics and culture. At the time, Sukarno was defending the peculiarities of Guided Democracy. Jokowi has no desire to return to that form of authoritarianism. His interpretation of Trisakti is generic, abstracted from the original context. For Jokowi, who claimed Trisakti to be his guiding principle as early as 2012, it has practical import. It means, for instance, in economic terms, a greater emphasis on domestic production for domestic consumption, a reduction in the massive importation of things such as rice and sugar that can be easily produced in Indonesia. It means deriving greater revenue from the mines and oil wells that have so far enriched foreign corporations and a small group of local oligarchs, such as Aburizal Bakrie, the head of Golkar who has joined forces with Prabowo.
Jokowi’s commitment to the rule of law means that he is trying to overcome the entrenched legacy of both Sukarno’s Guided Democracy and Suharto’s New Order. Unlike every other presidential candidate since the first post-Suharto democratic election in 1999, he is seriously proposing to improve what social scientists call state capacity – its ability to collect taxes and spend that tax money on public goods – instead of just reshuffling the same set of rent-seekers. Prabowo has reportedly pledged a certain number of ministries to two of the parties supporting him (Golkar and PKS). That is the usual practice: the parties of the winning coalition receive ministerial posts as rewards. It is a sublime experience for them, sometimes prompting tears. They then proceed to mercilessly squeeze all the money they can out from their departments. With Jokowi, there is a chance that things will turn out differently. He has stated that he will not reward his allied parties with ministries.
Jokowi’s “vision and mission” statement is a detailed
42-page document, quite distinct from Prabowo’s 9-page, insubstantial, hastily written
statement. While it contains some boilerplate prose, it also
contains concrete proposals and carefully considered ideas. In elaborating the
meaning of Trisakti, Jokowi’s statement lists nine priorities for his
administration. Implicitly alluding to Sukarno’s Nine Points speech of June 1966
(Nawaksara), in which Sukarno defended his record against accusations
from the newly triumphant Suharto, Jokowi names the priorities the Nine Ideals
(Nawacita). One ideal is to “uphold human rights and reach just
resolutions for past cases of human rights violations.” Jokowi specifically
mentions the “1965 Tragedy” and the case for which Prabowo was responsible: the
disappearance of political activists in 1998 (p. 27).
When it comes to imitating Sukarno, Jokowi is as much an imposter as Prabowo. It could not be otherwise. Sukarno was a protean and unique figure. Jokowi adopts the left-wing populism of Sukarno while (thankfully) repudiating the authoritarian tendencies. Prabowo adopts the authoritarian tendencies while insincerely mouthing the rhetoric of left-wing populism. One champions the rule of law. The other champions himself as Il Duce. That both of them are emphasizing their allegiance to Sukarno indicates the enduring hold he has over the public’s imagination of state power.
Sukarno tried to embody the entire nation in himself and believed in the impossible idea that he could singlehandedly bind all the disparate groups together. Every year on independence day, he stepped behind a bank of microphones to deliver a lengthy speech that explained where the nation had come from, where it was, and where it was going. It was nothing like a US president’s “state of the union” address. It was about the meaning of the nation’s existence. The speech was broadcast over the state radio stations and many Indonesians reverently listened at the same time in sonic communion. He once said his monologue over the airwaves was really “a two-way conversation between Sukarno-the-man and Sukarno-the-People.”
In The King’s Two Bodies (1957), Ernst Kantorowicz wrote of the medieval kings of Europe having both a mortal body and an eternal body. As the embodiment of the entire state, the king’s body was also the “body politic.” It was a conception of royal power that can only be grasped by considering some political ideas as simultaneously theological ideas. The Indonesian state, like all other states today, carries its own theology, involving itself in ideas of immortality, the sacred, and the sublime. We have not transcended the medieval state in this respect, only sublimated it in different forms. As Benedict Anderson has argued, nationalism is better understood as a religion than an ideology.
Sukarno, given his central role in formulating the permanent state ideology (Pancasila), proclaiming independence, an irreversible event of eternal significance (sekali merdeka, tetap merdeka; once independent, forever independent), and ruling as its first president (appointed at one point as “president for life”), seems destined to reign as the immortal corpus mysticum of Indonesia’s body politic.
Sukarno is dead. Long live Sukarno.
……………
Professor John Roosa is a historian at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2014/05/26/sukarnos-two-bodies/
……………
Which Sukarno imitator would you prefer? The fellow wearing the black fez, just like the one Sukarno wore, or the fellow professing Sukarno’s slogans?
This is the choice facing Indonesia’s voters in the July 9 presidential election. The race between Prabowo Subianto and Joko Widodo (Jokowi) pits one version of Sukarno against another version. Both candidates advertise themselves as the authentic legatees of the country’s first president. Why are they appropriating the symbols and words of a long-dead president? Suharto, the army general who deposed Sukarno, spent his 32 years in power discrediting him as a relic of the “Old Order.” Why is his ghost still hovering around Indonesian politics?
Prabowo, the former lieutenant general and black ops specialist, likes the visual associations: his microphones are of a 1950s design like those Sukarno was photographed with; his white jacket is like the one Sukarno wore; the backdrops behind his photo-ops contain Sukarno portraits. His campaign managers claimed the large house they are using as their headquarters, Rumah Polonia, was once occupied by Sukarno. In fact, it was occupied by one of his wives, Yurike Sanger, and Sukarno only dropped in for the occasional conjugal visit.
Prabowo Subianto reprises Sukarno as he campaigns
during Indonesia’s elections.
Prabowo’s invocation of Sukarno’s spirit seems bizarre given that he is the ideological child of Suharto’s New Order and the biological child of a famous enemy of Sukarno’s. His father, a Dutch-educated economist, Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, collaborated with the CIA to sabotage Sukarno’s government and establish a parallel government in Sumatra in the late 1950s. The attempt failed and Sumitro was labeled a traitor. Prabowo (born 1951) partly grew up outside the country in places such as Singapore and Kuala Lumpur where his family lived in exile. Sumitro only returned in 1968, after Sukarno had been driven out of power and kept under house arrest (at the house of his Japanese wife, Ratna Sari Dewi). Back in Jakarta, Sumitro became the Minister of Trade and a father figure to the US-trained economists of the so-called “Berkeley mafia” who were helping engineer the New Order’s great natural resource sell-off. Prabowo’s family owes its fortune to the Suharto regime.
What Prabowo sees in Sukarno is the image of a powerful, charismatic leader. He admires the Sukarno who emasculated the political parties and ruled by decree during the Guided Democracy years (1959-66). Prabowo has said that he would like to create a new version of Guided Democracy. His political philosophy from the 1990s, when he started speaking to journalists, to the present consists of essentially a single point: Indonesia needs a strong leader. His speeches and his party’s literature revolve around this point. Gerindra, like its emblem of the Garuda (the bird on which Lord Vishnu rode), is just a vehicle; it is designed to ferry its god to the presidential palace, an earthly paradise for worshippers of state power. Prabowo and his billionaire brother created the political party so that he could run for president. He has had no patience for the day-to-day wrangling of law-making and the rule of law: he has not served as a member of parliament. He has no experience with government, only with the military, business, and the business of the military (as an international arms trader). His entire political career has been an exercise in personal aggrandisement.
Gerindra’s manifesto characterises the post-Suharto political system as “liberal democracy” that is not in accordance with the “national culture.” Electoral democracy is decentered and dissolute; it has made the body politic flaccid, preventing a “strong national leadership” from standing erect. In Prabowo’s mind, everything about a country – the quality of its economic system, culture, and international standing – depends on the “leadership factor.” The solution for all of Indonesia’s ills is a “strong national leadership,” meaning himself, the great one riding the $300,000 Lusitano horse.
Prabowo’s version of the Führerprinzip cannot be equated to Sukarno’s without anachronism. Sukarno built a cult around his leadership at a time when the nation was in an existential crisis: the Constitutional Assembly was deadlocked on the basic principle of the state, with the Islamic political parties insisting on an Islam as the basic principle; army colonels in the outer islands had set up a rival government with help from Prabowo’s father and the Dulles brothers; armed partisans of an Islamic state terrorized West Java, even in areas close to the capital; the country was under martial law; cabinets had trouble lasting for more than a few months. And so on. Sukarno, as a product of the mass struggle for independence, presented himself as the “tongue” of the people, their voice, not their backbone or élan vital. His July 5, 1959 Dekrit was a last resort, an unwanted outcome. This authoritarian polity was not what he had worked towards since becoming a political leader in the 1920s, even as he put the best face on it.
Prabowo is condemning “liberal democracy” at a time when the Indonesian state is not facing an emergency, when much can be done to expand the rule of law and democratic rights. His ideas have not changed since he was part of Suharto’s praetorian guard. A journalist interviewed him in 1997: “He quotes academic studies that claim that a viable democracy can only be maintained after a society reaches a per capita GNP of around $2,000 (Indonesia is at $940). In the meantime, he says, there must be stability to achieve a basic economic level of welfare.” One knows it’s a fool’s game when the goalposts keep moving: Indonesia’s GDP per capita today is about $3,500 but supposedly it is still not enough to have a “liberal democracy.”
Prabowo fills his speeches with the populist, anti-imperialist rhetoric that has been the stock-in-trade of the Sukarnoist political tradition. He condemns the privatization of state-owned companies, deregulation pushed by the IMF, and the money politics behind Indonesian elections. According to him, foreign corporations, neoliberal policy wonks, and kleptocrats conspire to exploit the sweated labor of Indonesian peasants and workers. It is hard to take the rhetoric seriously coming from a wealthy capitalist who has been negligent in paying his own workers. Gerindra would not exist without the infusions of money from his brother, Hashim, the 32nd richest man in Indonesia according to Forbes. (If Prabowo becomes president one can be sure Hashim will quickly rise in the rankings.) Prabowo’s opportunistic use of the Sukarnoist rhetoric has occasionally landed him in trouble. Because of his promises to reassert state ownership over unnamed foreign-owned businesses, Hashim had to issue a press release to assure spooked investors that his brother has no plans to repeat Sukarno’s nationalization policies.
For the sake of historical accuracy, he should build his campaign around Suharto nostalgia. Prabowo wants to return the country to some form of the pre-engineered electoral system and unaccountable presidency of Suharto’s time. The problem he faces is that Suharto lacked one thing that he needs to win elections: the image of a virile, charismatic public speaker forcefully denouncing enemies and rallying “the masses.” Suharto’s public image – the quiet, reserved, non-ideological administrator – was designed to be the antithesis of Sukarno’s. Prabowo is designing a new mutant creature, transplanting the wild, romantic heart of Sukarno into the stiff, rotting corpse of Suhartoism.
If Prabowo invokes Sukarno to legitimate his retrograde, personalistic politics, Jokowi invokes Sukarno to legitimate a polar opposite political agenda. Jokowi, the choice of Sukarno’s biological daughter, Megawati (whose mother is another wife, Fatmawati), to be her party’s presidential candidate, represents a clear break with the existing politics of rent-seeking. As mayor of Solo (2005-12) and governor of Jakarta (2012-14), he cracked down on the civil servants’ bribe-taking and embezzling, thereby freeing up money to be spent on public goods. The progress in just two years in dealing with Jakarta’s problems, such as flooding, traffic congestion, lack of green space, and poor public health, has been impressive, especially when compared with the passivity of previous governors. Jokowi repeatedly states that the government has enough revenue to finance social welfare projects, as long as the revenue is not diverted into private pockets. He has shown what can be done when civil servants are serving the public.
Jokowi, unlike Sukarno and Prabowo, is not given to grandstanding. His speeches, effective and straightforward, have no flair. For his campaign slogan, he has borrowed Sukarno’s formula of Trisakti – the three sakti-s. Sakti connotes a kind of sacred or magical power. In a 1963 speech, Sukarno called for Indonesia to be “standing on its own feet” in its politics, economics and culture. At the time, Sukarno was defending the peculiarities of Guided Democracy. Jokowi has no desire to return to that form of authoritarianism. His interpretation of Trisakti is generic, abstracted from the original context. For Jokowi, who claimed Trisakti to be his guiding principle as early as 2012, it has practical import. It means, for instance, in economic terms, a greater emphasis on domestic production for domestic consumption, a reduction in the massive importation of things such as rice and sugar that can be easily produced in Indonesia. It means deriving greater revenue from the mines and oil wells that have so far enriched foreign corporations and a small group of local oligarchs, such as Aburizal Bakrie, the head of Golkar who has joined forces with Prabowo.
Jokowi’s commitment to the rule of law means that he is trying to overcome the entrenched legacy of both Sukarno’s Guided Democracy and Suharto’s New Order. Unlike every other presidential candidate since the first post-Suharto democratic election in 1999, he is seriously proposing to improve what social scientists call state capacity – its ability to collect taxes and spend that tax money on public goods – instead of just reshuffling the same set of rent-seekers. Prabowo has reportedly pledged a certain number of ministries to two of the parties supporting him (Golkar and PKS). That is the usual practice: the parties of the winning coalition receive ministerial posts as rewards. It is a sublime experience for them, sometimes prompting tears. They then proceed to mercilessly squeeze all the money they can out from their departments. With Jokowi, there is a chance that things will turn out differently. He has stated that he will not reward his allied parties with ministries.
The image of Sukarno (left) is used on an advertisement
for Jokowi.
When it comes to imitating Sukarno, Jokowi is as much an imposter as Prabowo. It could not be otherwise. Sukarno was a protean and unique figure. Jokowi adopts the left-wing populism of Sukarno while (thankfully) repudiating the authoritarian tendencies. Prabowo adopts the authoritarian tendencies while insincerely mouthing the rhetoric of left-wing populism. One champions the rule of law. The other champions himself as Il Duce. That both of them are emphasizing their allegiance to Sukarno indicates the enduring hold he has over the public’s imagination of state power.
Sukarno tried to embody the entire nation in himself and believed in the impossible idea that he could singlehandedly bind all the disparate groups together. Every year on independence day, he stepped behind a bank of microphones to deliver a lengthy speech that explained where the nation had come from, where it was, and where it was going. It was nothing like a US president’s “state of the union” address. It was about the meaning of the nation’s existence. The speech was broadcast over the state radio stations and many Indonesians reverently listened at the same time in sonic communion. He once said his monologue over the airwaves was really “a two-way conversation between Sukarno-the-man and Sukarno-the-People.”
In The King’s Two Bodies (1957), Ernst Kantorowicz wrote of the medieval kings of Europe having both a mortal body and an eternal body. As the embodiment of the entire state, the king’s body was also the “body politic.” It was a conception of royal power that can only be grasped by considering some political ideas as simultaneously theological ideas. The Indonesian state, like all other states today, carries its own theology, involving itself in ideas of immortality, the sacred, and the sublime. We have not transcended the medieval state in this respect, only sublimated it in different forms. As Benedict Anderson has argued, nationalism is better understood as a religion than an ideology.
Sukarno, given his central role in formulating the permanent state ideology (Pancasila), proclaiming independence, an irreversible event of eternal significance (sekali merdeka, tetap merdeka; once independent, forever independent), and ruling as its first president (appointed at one point as “president for life”), seems destined to reign as the immortal corpus mysticum of Indonesia’s body politic.
Sukarno is dead. Long live Sukarno.
……………
Professor John Roosa is a historian at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2014/05/26/sukarnos-two-bodies/
09 December 2013
08 December 2013
Mutu Pendidikan indon Terendah di Dunia
Jum'at, 06 Desember 2013 | 17:28 WIB
Mutu Pendidikan Indonesia Terendah di Dunia
"Selama mengikuti studi tersebut sejak 2000, Indonesia selalu berada pada salah satu peringkat rendah," kata anggota Koalisi Pendidikan, Ade Irawan, melalui rilis pers pada Jumat, 6 Desember 2013.
Dalam studi ini, mutu pendidikan Indonesia yang rendah dikonfirmasikan dengan anggaran dan biaya pendidikan yang langsung dibayar masyarakat naik signifikan dari tahun ke tahun. PISA merupakan studi internasional yang diselenggarakan Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Indonesia mengikuti dua tes internasional, yaitu studi Trends in International Mathematics and Science Studies dan Progress in Internatioal Reading Literacy Studi untuk murid sekolah dasar. "Indonesia juga berada di ranking terendah dalam kedua studi tersebut," kata Ade.
Menurut Ade, PISA harus dilihat secara kritis. "Karena di balik itu ada agenda yang bersifat ideologis-liberalistis yang hanya mengukur tiga kemampuan dasar murid dan tidak memadai dijadikan dasar dalam pengambilan kebijakan pendidikan nasional," kata Ade.
Ade mengatakan, selayaknya Kementerian Pendidikan mengembangkan sistem assessment bersifat nasional dan mencerminkan keberagaman anak. Mutu pendidikan Indonesia yang rendah, sebagaimana tercermin dari hasil studi PISA, memperlihatkan ada sesuatu yang salah dalam sistem persekolahan dan kebijakan pendidikan Indonesia.
Beberapa di antara masalah itu adalah ujian nasional dan berbagai tes lainnya; perubahan kurikulum dari waktu ke waktu; program sekolah unggulan (sekolah bertaraf internasional); kompetisi dalam berbagai Olimpiade; penambahan jam belajar; serta sertifikasi dan ujian kompetensi guru. "Ternyata gagal meningkatkan mutu pendidikan," kata Ade.
Menurut Ade, Koalisi Pendidikan mendesak agar rezim pendidikan neoliberal, yang terlihat dari kebijakan pendidikan nasional beberapa dekade terakhir, diakhiri. "Kami mendesak Menteri Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan mempersiapkan agenda reformasi pendidikan," kata Ade.
RIZKI PUSPITA SARI
INILAH SEBABNYA KENAPA INDON JADI KOELI DIMANA-MANA SAMPAI KAPAN PUN
05 December 2013
19 June 2013
Indonesia 15 years after the New Order - INDON GETTING STUPID EVERYDAY
Indonesia 15 years after the New Order
by Jeff Kingston
Special To The Japan Times
In May 1998 President Suharto resigned, ending three decades in power in Indonesia and what was known as the New Order. As an army general, he had intervened against a coup attempt in 1965 that ended with the sidelining of President Sukarno and months of massacres all over the archipelago as Suharto consolidated his grip.
The official narrative implicated Beijing and local communists for orchestrating the coup. It also lauded Suharto’s role, bestowing legitimacy on his seizure of power. This political transition was Cold War-style, and it was only decades later that the CIA’s role emerged.
It is a dark corner of Indonesian history that has been belatedly disinterred, but the reckoning remains incomplete and perpetrators have not been brought to justice. Somewhat surprisingly, in contemporary Indonesia there is a certain nostalgia for the New Order era and the strongman leadership of Suharto.
Such palpable longing for what is imagined to be a better time stands as a searing indictment of contemporary Indonesian politics — or maybe nobody now remembers how ruthless and avaricious Suharto was. Time magazine reported he amassed a fortune of at least $15 billion, and he brutally suppressed internal dissent.
Back in the mid-’80s I spoke to survivors of 1984′s Tanjung Priok massacre in the port area of North Jakarta, who said soldiers ran amok. Reflecting widespread grievances, they also showed me a poster of a prominent Chinese tycoon crony of Suharto’s pouring dollars down his throat. At that time one would sometimes see the body bags of alleged criminals killed by the police lying around the capital’s streets.
Timorese I met at the time told me about the horrors on their island, where about 200,000 people — one-third of the population — died in the aftermath of Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of the former Portuguese colony. So these were brutal times even if Indonesia was being lauded as the World Bank’s prize student. And though there were elections during the New Order, they were more orchestrated than democratic.
Are things so bad now? Since 1999, Indonesia has enjoyed three smooth transitions of executive power, with free and fair elections. The military has retreated from politics, giving up its bloc of reserved seats in the parliament. The press is free, albeit mostly vapid and sensationalist, and the communal violence that erupted in the wake of Suharto’s departure has mostly subsided. In addition, the economy is going gangbusters, investors are gung-ho and national-branding ads on CNN tout this as Indonesia’s “golden moment.”
But urban areas, most notoriously in Jakarta itself, suffer horrendous traffic jams, periodic flooding, environmental degradation and yawning gaps between the new middle class and those bobbing in the wake of surging growth. Many people wash their clothes and brush their teeth in fetid canals where others defecate.
But in these go-go days, the middle class may reach 20 percent of the nation’s population of 242 million by 2020 — and they are fueling consumption-led growth. They are also aspirational and want better infrastructure, better schools, a cleaner environment and good jobs for their children.
However, the government is not delivering fast enough — and it also suffers from a crisis of legitimacy because graft is endemic. Politicians have a lousy reputation for good reason, preoccupied as they are in accumulating wealth, shirking their duties and denying the scandal de jour.
The incumbent president since 2004, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, known as SBY, is a former general with a deserved reputation for fecklessness who has developed indecision into an art form. He has, though, presided over a consolidation of democracy and a booming economy — and has stomped out the al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist network, Jemaah Islamiyah.
Overall, SBY compares quite favorably with his three erratic post-Suharto predecessors: Jusuf Habibie (1998-99) who as vice-president assumed power when Suharto stepped down; Abdurrahman Wahid (1999-2001), who was impeached; and Megawati Sukarnoputri (2001-04).
Arguably when SBY leaves office next year after fulfilling the maximum (but largely unremarkable) two terms in office, he will leave the nation in much better shape than when he assumed the presidency — but his great capacity for inaction and avoiding tough choices has hurt. For example, he has not taken a resolute stand on Islamic violence against religious minorities.
On his watch, triggered by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and 170,000 deaths, negotiations ended the separatist rebellion in Aceh in 2005, where the devastation was concentrated; now the region enjoys a degree of autonomy and stability. In addition, decentralization has helped quell violence in other hot spots, but now that local politicians exert control over provincial resources, there are complaints that corruption has flowered. Suharto’s wife was known as “Madame 10 percent,” but she provided one-stop shopping. Now there are thousands of Suhartos looking for a bribe — and they can’t deliver as effectively.
Another key problem is that though the military may have retreated to barracks, its fingers remain in many pies. The military funds a considerable part of its budget through various entrepreneurial activities, not all above board, and — in cahoots with local politicians and gangs — they have figured out how to make decentralization a goldmine. However, keeping the military on board has been a priority for the nation’s nascent democracy, meaning the government turns a blind eye to protection rackets and other ventures and has not delved into accountability for past abuses during the New Order.
So Indonesia’s apparent strides forward may not appear so convincing to its own citizens. Those who have done well aspire to more, and those on the outside looking in wonder when will it be their turn. Poverty — an estimated 100 million eke by on less than $2 a day — remains a glaring reminder of unrealized promises. After all, the fifth pillar of Pancasila, the official national ideology, enshrines social justice as a right — though it’s one that has proved elusive.
Now, as Indonesia gears up for those presidential elections in 2014, the long shadows of the New Order are evident.
The early frontrunner is Prabowo Subianto, the former son-in-law of Suharto who, as a special-forces commander, was implicated in student shootings and orchestrating anti-Chinese riots in 1998 in order to sow chaos and justify a coup d’état. He failed, but reinvented himself as a successful entrepreneur and has liberally used his campaign war chest to generate a buzz; after all the past is the past.
Another leading candidate is from the Bakrie clan, a Suharto crony family. Aburizal Bakrie may be the head of Golkar, Suharto’s old party, but his prospects are slipping away along with his family’s fortunes, including a major scandal involving a Rothschild descendant.
And then there is Megawati — looking for redemption and more; bearing a name everyone recognizes, but not much else.
Into this miasma of politics a newcomer has stepped on stage: Joko Widodo, Jakarta’s new governor. He is untainted by scandal, has a stellar record and a populist touch — which explains why he is the odds-on favorite to succeed SBY.
But can he make a difference? In some ways he already has through unseating establishment incumbents, giving voice to the urban poor and unabashedly standing up to anti-Chinese sentiments while battling against globalization.
He is the man of the moment, a champion of the have-nots and marginalized — but the vested interests have enormous advantages and will probably get their way even if he represents change Indonesians want to believe in. And nobody is counting Prabowo Subianto out in what promises to be a bare-knuckles affair.
Jeff Kingston is Director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan.
___________________________________________________________INDON OH INDON, WHY YOU NEVER LEARNED FROM YOUR HISTORY?
OOHH MY BAD, YOU DON'T HAVE HISTORY, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
EG: BACK THEN THERE WAS NO SUCH THING AS "BAHASA INDON" THEN WHERE IS THE WORD COMING FROM?
Lebih Menguntungkan, PLN Pilih Impor Listrik dari Malaysia
REF: INI MEMANG SUDAH BETUL, DASAR INDON MEMANG GAK TAU APA-APA SELAIN KORUPSI DAN PENDATANG HARAM!
JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com — PT PLN siap merealisasikan rencana impor listrik dari Serawak, Malaysia. Dalam waktu dekat, perusahaan pelat merah tersebut akan memulai konstruksi jaringan transmisi yang akan tersambung dengan wilayah perbatasan Indonesia-Malaysia sepanjang 86 kilometer.
Nur Pamudji, Direktur Utama PT PLN, mengatakan, pihaknya telah melakukan penandatanganan kerja sama pembangunan interkoneksi jaringan listrik Kalimantan Barat-Serawak bersama Serawak Energy Berhad (SEB). Jaringan transmisi tersebut akan menggunakan daya 275 kilovolt (kV) dari Bengkayang, Kalimantan Barat, hingga Mambong, Serawak, sepanjang 122 km.
Rinciannya, jaringan transmisi sepanjang 86 km berada di Kalimantan Barat, sedangkan sisanya berada di wilayah Malaysia. PLN sendiri akan membiayai jaringan yang berada di wilayah Indonesia dengan investasi mencapai 110 juta dollar AS. "Kami akan memulai konstruksinya mulai Juni ini," kata Nur Pamudji, akhir pekan lalu.
Rencananya, pembangunan jaringan transmisi akan rampung pada pertengahan 2015. Selanjutnya, Indonesia akan mengimpor setrum sebanyak 50 megawatt (MW) dan akan ditingkatkan menjadi 230 MW selama lima tahun ke depan.
Adapun sumber setrum dari Serawak umumnya dihasilkan dari pembangkit listrik tenaga air (PLTA). Wilayah Sabah di Serawak memiliki bendungan yang cukup besar sehingga bisa menghasilkan listrik yang sangat besar. Nur bilang, harga jual beli listrik yang telah disepakati yaitu 9 dollar AS per kilowatt hour (kWh) tanpa ada eskalasi.
Dia mengklaim, impor listrik akan sangat menguntungkan Indonesia. Saat ini, pasokan listrik di Kalimantan Barat baru mencapai 150 MW dengan tingkat rasio elektrifikasi 57,54 persen. Padahal, potensi pertumbuhan ekonomi di sana berkembang pesat dengan adanya industri kelapa sawit maupun rencana pembangunan smelter. "Indonesia akan untung karena pasokan listrik di Serawak cukup tinggi hingga mencapai 6.000 MW," kata Nur.
Fabby Tumiwa, pengamat ketenagalistrikan nasional, mengatakan, kegiatan impor setrum yang akan dilakukan PLN memang akan lebih menguntungkan bagi Indonesia dibandingkan jika perusahaan pelat merah tersebut membangun pembangkit listrik sendiri. "Apalagi kalau sedang beban puncak, bahan bakar dari diesel pasti akan sangat mahal, lebih baik beli dari Malaysia," ujar dia.
Ia menambahkan, besaran investasi senilai 110 juta dollar AS yang digelontorkan PLN untuk jaringan transmisi akan lebih efesien dibandingkan dengan membangun pembangkit listrik tenaga uap (PLTU). Menurutnya, duit sebesar itu hanya dapat digunakan untuk membangun PLTU berkapasitas 100 MW dan belum termasuk jaringan transmisinya. (Muhammad Yazid)
- Senin, 17 Juni 2013 | 07:17 WIB
Nur Pamudji, Direktur Utama PT PLN, mengatakan, pihaknya telah melakukan penandatanganan kerja sama pembangunan interkoneksi jaringan listrik Kalimantan Barat-Serawak bersama Serawak Energy Berhad (SEB). Jaringan transmisi tersebut akan menggunakan daya 275 kilovolt (kV) dari Bengkayang, Kalimantan Barat, hingga Mambong, Serawak, sepanjang 122 km.
Rinciannya, jaringan transmisi sepanjang 86 km berada di Kalimantan Barat, sedangkan sisanya berada di wilayah Malaysia. PLN sendiri akan membiayai jaringan yang berada di wilayah Indonesia dengan investasi mencapai 110 juta dollar AS. "Kami akan memulai konstruksinya mulai Juni ini," kata Nur Pamudji, akhir pekan lalu.
Rencananya, pembangunan jaringan transmisi akan rampung pada pertengahan 2015. Selanjutnya, Indonesia akan mengimpor setrum sebanyak 50 megawatt (MW) dan akan ditingkatkan menjadi 230 MW selama lima tahun ke depan.
Adapun sumber setrum dari Serawak umumnya dihasilkan dari pembangkit listrik tenaga air (PLTA). Wilayah Sabah di Serawak memiliki bendungan yang cukup besar sehingga bisa menghasilkan listrik yang sangat besar. Nur bilang, harga jual beli listrik yang telah disepakati yaitu 9 dollar AS per kilowatt hour (kWh) tanpa ada eskalasi.
Dia mengklaim, impor listrik akan sangat menguntungkan Indonesia. Saat ini, pasokan listrik di Kalimantan Barat baru mencapai 150 MW dengan tingkat rasio elektrifikasi 57,54 persen. Padahal, potensi pertumbuhan ekonomi di sana berkembang pesat dengan adanya industri kelapa sawit maupun rencana pembangunan smelter. "Indonesia akan untung karena pasokan listrik di Serawak cukup tinggi hingga mencapai 6.000 MW," kata Nur.
Fabby Tumiwa, pengamat ketenagalistrikan nasional, mengatakan, kegiatan impor setrum yang akan dilakukan PLN memang akan lebih menguntungkan bagi Indonesia dibandingkan jika perusahaan pelat merah tersebut membangun pembangkit listrik sendiri. "Apalagi kalau sedang beban puncak, bahan bakar dari diesel pasti akan sangat mahal, lebih baik beli dari Malaysia," ujar dia.
Ia menambahkan, besaran investasi senilai 110 juta dollar AS yang digelontorkan PLN untuk jaringan transmisi akan lebih efesien dibandingkan dengan membangun pembangkit listrik tenaga uap (PLTU). Menurutnya, duit sebesar itu hanya dapat digunakan untuk membangun PLTU berkapasitas 100 MW dan belum termasuk jaringan transmisinya. (Muhammad Yazid)
Editor : Erlangga Djumena
13 March 2012
Agreement on maid stays
Wednesday March 7, 2012
Subra: Agreement on maid stays
By JOSEPH SIPALAN and P. ARUNA
newsdesk@thestar.com.my
PUTRAJAYA: Malaysia will continue to pursue its current maid agreement with Indonesia until and unless the latter changes its policy, said Human Resources Minister Datuk Seri Dr S. Subramaniam.
He said the Indonesian government had not given any indication of a supposed roadmap to stop sending maids to several countries, including Malaysia, by 2017.
“At the present moment, we will go by what has been discussed and signed, and what has been endorsed by our Prime Minister and Indonesia's President,” he said after chairing a National Labour Advisory Council meeting here yesterday.
Subramaniam was commenting on a report by a local daily yesterday, which claimed that Indonesia had laid down a roadmap to almost entirely stop sending maids abroad by 2017.
The minister noted that Malaysia would not be able to do much should its neighbours decide to change its policy on Indonesian migrant workers in the domestic sector.
“If Indonesia changes its policy, then we will just have to live with it,” he said.
Subramaniam pointed out that Malaysia still had other source countries for maids, such as the Philippines, Sri Lanka, India and Cambodia, as options.
However, he added that Malaysians may eventually have to accept the possibility that hiring a maid would become too expensive.
Meanwhile, maid agencies in Indonesia claim they would suffer losses if they supply domestic workers at the price agreed upon in the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Malaysia.
The agencies said the delay in the entry of maids into Malaysia was due to the price agreed in the MoU, and not because of incomplete applications submitted by the Malaysian side as reported.
Malaysian National Association of Employment Agencies (Pikap) said their counterparts in Indonesia had informed them they were unable to send the maids for the agreed price.
“They told us the cost of recruiting and training maids was too high and it was unrealistic for them to supply the maids to us at the price agreed in the MoU,” said Pikap secretary Lim Mei Yun yesterday.
On another matter, she said Pikap had received almost 12,000 requests from Malaysians who wanted to hire Indonesian maids.
“We have registered these employers and placed them on a waiting list,” she said.
oNCE YOU CALLED YOURSELF INDON, YOU WILL ALWAYS BE INDON AND WILL ALWAYS BE KOELI OF THE WORLD, AND YOU STILL PROUD OF THAT BEING KOELI EVERYWHERE.OH YEAAHH? UNTIL WHEN? YOU CLAIM YOUR COUNTRY IS RICH, BUT WHAT HAPPENING TO YOUR GOVERNMENT? INDON TRUELY KOELI
Subra: Agreement on maid stays
By JOSEPH SIPALAN and P. ARUNA
newsdesk@thestar.com.my
PUTRAJAYA: Malaysia will continue to pursue its current maid agreement with Indonesia until and unless the latter changes its policy, said Human Resources Minister Datuk Seri Dr S. Subramaniam.
He said the Indonesian government had not given any indication of a supposed roadmap to stop sending maids to several countries, including Malaysia, by 2017.
“At the present moment, we will go by what has been discussed and signed, and what has been endorsed by our Prime Minister and Indonesia's President,” he said after chairing a National Labour Advisory Council meeting here yesterday.
Subramaniam was commenting on a report by a local daily yesterday, which claimed that Indonesia had laid down a roadmap to almost entirely stop sending maids abroad by 2017.
The minister noted that Malaysia would not be able to do much should its neighbours decide to change its policy on Indonesian migrant workers in the domestic sector.
“If Indonesia changes its policy, then we will just have to live with it,” he said.
Subramaniam pointed out that Malaysia still had other source countries for maids, such as the Philippines, Sri Lanka, India and Cambodia, as options.
However, he added that Malaysians may eventually have to accept the possibility that hiring a maid would become too expensive.
Meanwhile, maid agencies in Indonesia claim they would suffer losses if they supply domestic workers at the price agreed upon in the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Malaysia.
The agencies said the delay in the entry of maids into Malaysia was due to the price agreed in the MoU, and not because of incomplete applications submitted by the Malaysian side as reported.
Malaysian National Association of Employment Agencies (Pikap) said their counterparts in Indonesia had informed them they were unable to send the maids for the agreed price.
“They told us the cost of recruiting and training maids was too high and it was unrealistic for them to supply the maids to us at the price agreed in the MoU,” said Pikap secretary Lim Mei Yun yesterday.
On another matter, she said Pikap had received almost 12,000 requests from Malaysians who wanted to hire Indonesian maids.
“We have registered these employers and placed them on a waiting list,” she said.
oNCE YOU CALLED YOURSELF INDON, YOU WILL ALWAYS BE INDON AND WILL ALWAYS BE KOELI OF THE WORLD, AND YOU STILL PROUD OF THAT BEING KOELI EVERYWHERE.OH YEAAHH? UNTIL WHEN? YOU CLAIM YOUR COUNTRY IS RICH, BUT WHAT HAPPENING TO YOUR GOVERNMENT? INDON TRUELY KOELI
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