An interesting program on ABC tonight (Monday 27th Mar)
it quotes Transparency International, http://www.transparency.org/, that Indonesia has one of the largest 'corruption' figures in the world.

@viking:

Who are you trying to fool? We know that Aborigines were not even considered Australian citizens until 1967, that your policy of stealing Aboriginal children from their parents continued until 1970s, and your racist White Australia Policy continued until 1978. Until now, most Australian whites continue viewing Aborigines as sub-humans and treating them with extremely racist contempt. Your PM Howard still refuses to apologise for all the barbaric treatment you whites meted out to Aborigines throughout the history of white "settlement" in Australia.

We Indonesians are superior to your backward racist mentality. We accomodate Papuans' tribal heritage by establishing MRP (Majelis Rakyat Papua) as a governmental body to define Papuan tribal laws and arbitrage on behalf of it. We accomodate demands for autonomy from West Irian Jaya people by partitioning the area into a separate province from Papua. In Papua itself, all gubernutorial candidates MUST BE NATIVE PAPUANS, which actually discriminates against 50-60% of the inhabitants of that province who are transmigrants. Recently, both West Irian Jaya and Papua provinces held direct gubernutorial elections which went very smoothly and recorded more than 90% voter turnout, indicating that overwhelming proportion of Papuans are happy on their political status.

Both these elections were won by native Papuans, the winner in West Irian Jaya province is Abraham Octavianus Ataruri, a retired brigadier-general in Indonesian army. While in Papua province, the winner is Barnabas Suebu, an agitator for integration with Indonesia during Dutch rule, governor of Irian Jaya under Suharto, and former Indonesian ambassador to Mexico.

BTW, Indonesia has been around for 60 years, we are capable of switching modes of government from emergency war government (1945-1949), Australia-like parliamentary democracy (1949-1959), Sukarno dictatorship (1959-1967), New Order dictatorship (1967-1998), and back to democracy (1998-now). We easily defeated countless Islamist, communist, separatist, and foreign-backed rebellions without any serious disruption to peace. So, Indonesia will be around for a very long time. Deal with it.

@coyote:

Actually I'm neither a Javanese nor an "apostate". Your blatant display of racism and religious intolerance just shows what kind of primitive Nazis the Papuan separatists and their sympathisers are.

@BOAZ_David:

Indeed Pancasila secular nationalism has been the ideology that brought Indonesia its independence in 1945, and has been the national ideology eversince both under rule of Sukarno and Suharto. What Indonesia needs to resist destructive Islamisation that has become "trendy" recently, is to strengthen this original Pancasila nationalism once more.

Australian Christians need not worry about us Indonesian Christians, as not only are we superior in numbers, we are also more serious about our religion than Australians. For instance, while in their lives Australians only go to church for baptisms, wedding, and funerals, most Indonesian Christians actually go to church every Sunday. Otherwise, Indonesian Christianity has a much older history and heritage than in Australia, with the first Indonesian Catholics converted in 1500s by Saint Francis Xavier at the same time Martin Luther started his Reformation. Many Indonesians become Christian missionaries, not only in Indonesia but elsewhere, even amongst Amazonian Indians in Brazil, the world's largest Catholic country.

@gusi:

There is no need to worry about "break-up" of Indonesia. Pan-Indonesian nationalism is very strong and face no threat. Ethnic-separatism in Indonesia had only ever influenced two ethnic-groups out of 750 different ethnic groups in Indonesia, and only became a problem following the fall of Suharto. However, these two cases of separatism has basically died.

Successful military offensive in 2003 combined with effects of tsunami forced the more troublesome Acehnese separatists to surrender in 2005. In Papua and West Irian Jaya provinces, the separatists never presented much of security threat, while majority of population in these two provinces are transmigrants. Majority of native Papuans are peace-loving and law-abiding Indonesian citizens who participate fully in Indonesian national life, from becoming Olympic silver-winning athletes to national artists/actors.

Thanks to all on this thread for a genuinely educational experience.

In many other threads, the extremism that (inevitably) surfaces tends to hide, rather than illuminate the argument. Here, for some reason, it is different – a little surprisingly, given the relatively gentle, even wishy-washy, article.

For a start, underneath the obvious emotion, PTBI is delivering an object lesson in the meaning behind Robbie Burns' immortal lines:

“Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursel's as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
And foolish notion”

The mirror he holds up does not make us look particularly attractive. For a start, his comments on our history are painfully accurate, as demonstrated by the indignant, but unconvincing rebuttals.

PTBI: >>Australia is the only "nation" in Asia-Pacific region that originated from a completely illegal landgrab based on the brutal and racist "terra nullius" concept...<<

Viking: >>Stooping to tu quoque, Indonesian? As everyone is aware, Australia's settlement occurred in an era when much was different.<<

PTBI: >>Who are you trying to fool? We know that Aborigines were not even considered Australian citizens until 1967, that your policy of stealing Aboriginal children from their parents continued until 1970s, and your racist White Australia Policy continued until 1978<<.... etc etc.

You have to admit, he has a point.

Out of all the heat come a couple of bits of semi-detached observation - gusi, thanks for this:

>>I think it would be a bit naive to expect any democracy installed in Indonesia will succeed in one go. Democracies are very unstable.<<

Democracy, as practised in various parts of the world in the twentyfirst century, is not necessarily the universal panacea that some people (hello GW?) would have us believe.

However distasteful it might appear to our over-refined political palate, the autocratic Lee Kwan Yew dragged Singapore into the twentieth century with only the briefest nod towards consensus.

Who amongst us can state categorically that a similarly unifying figure in Indonesia would not be the best prescription at this point in their history?

Keep going, I'm learning heaps.

Hear! Hear! Pericles!

And I hear very well indeed.

Well, Pericles, you might will find Slave to Indonesia's posts informative... I note that he glossed over the million plus deaths of Chinese (allegedly "Communist") as well as hundreds of thousands of Timorese and Papuans, in my lifetime, while lambasting us as Australians for the deaths of Aboriginals around 200 years ago. I would note that as a nation, we have come to terms with our treatment of Aboriginals, while Indonesia continues with ethnic cleansing to this very day.

I find it fascinating, too, that a Christian Indonesian can gloss over the near daily deaths of fellow Christians (the usual heroic stuff- staunch male defender of the Islamic faith attacks schoolgirl with machete, or mob burns down church etc). Unbelievable. Not only a propagandist for a corrupt and brutal nation, but a dhimmi to boot!