March 29, 2016 edition

AIDUL Fitriciada Azhari, 48, turned out to be the dark horse in the search for a chairman of the Judicial Commission. He was a last-minute entry after the House of Representatives' (DPR) law commission rejected two of the candidates, and he got the job. "I wasn't even under consideration so it was just pure chance," said Aidul at his Jakarta office last week.
He is now responsible for completing the work to be done by the commission, from reinforcing its legitimacy to ironing out relations with the Supreme Court and addressing the problem of judges' safety. "All this is to protect the integrity of the judiciary," he told Tempo reporters Tulus Wijanarko, Fransisco Rosarians and Raymundus Rikang.

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March 22, 2016 edition

A week after the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) held its summit in Jakarta in early March, Foreign Minister Retno Lestari Priansari Marsudi, 53, flew to Amman, the capital of Jordan. Her mission was to swear in Maha Abu-Shusheh, Indonesia's honorary consul for Palestine whom President Joko Widodo had appointed at the OIC summit. The honorary consul will reside in Ramallah, Palestine.
Minister Retno had planned to enter Palestine from Jordan by helicopter on March 13. At the last minute, however, the Israeli government withdrew its clearance for the Indonesian delegation to fly over its territory. "That's fine. No problem," conceded Retno.

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March 15, 2016 edition

EKA Kurniawan, 41, represents fresh blood in Indonesia's literary world. Last week, he was recently announced as one of 13 nominees of the prestigious 2016 Man Booker International Prize for Literature. He is the first Indonesian to be nominated, a confirmation that Eka has begun to receive international recognition as a literary figure.
The Man Booker International Prize is a prestigious award for literary works in English. Previously, the award was given every two years but starting this year, it will be handed out annually. Eka stands alongside such luminary writers as Han Kang (South Korea), Yan Lianke (China), Kenzaburo Oe (Japan), Marie Ndiaye (France), Elena Ferrante (Italy) and Orhan Pamuk (Turkey). The winner will be announced on April 14.

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March 8, 2016 edition

The visit of the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar of Cairo, Egypt, Sheikh Ahmad Muhammad Ahmad Ath-Thayyeb, to Indonesia was to reaffirm the message of peace, as taught in Islam. During the week-long visit in mid-February, Ath-Thayyeb met with various figures, including President Joko Widodo and members of the Indonesia Council of Ulama (MUI) and visited the Gontor Darussalam Modern Islamic Boarding School in Ponorogo, East Java.
Ath-Thayyeb, who is also the rector of Al-Azhar University, is known as a moderate religious scholar. He often propagates peaceful Islamic teachings and is against violence claiming to be based on religious teachings. In Egypt, this 70-year-old man is against the Muslim Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin). In fact, he declared that Al-Azhar has never been open to that fundamentalist group.

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March 1, 2016 edition

In the past two weeks, Youth and Sports Minister Imam Nahrawi felt like he was inside a rollercoaster. He was up one time and plunging down the next. Fresh from his success in ensuring that Rio Haryanto takes part in the 2016 Formula 1 car racing events, he must immediately carry out President Joko Widodo's instruction to review the freeze on the All-Indonesia Football Association (PSSI). After all, he was the one who disbanded the association because he had felt it needed reforming.
Imam's determination to help Rio began when he declared that the government would provide him with Rp100 billion from the amended state budget (APBN-N). It was an idea that led to sharp public debate. Critics felt that it was too big a price to support just one athlete. Imam went ahead anyway, even going to the House of Representatives (DPR) for approval, which is expected to happen this coming April.

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February 23, 2016 edition

HIS name came up after the Jakarta government announced it would raze down the Kalijodo neighborhood because it stood in the middle of a green zone and because many of its occupants were unscrupulous figures. One particular figure stood out: Abdul Aziz, known as the 'King of Kalijodo', who decided to go to the authorities and express his disapproval on the attempts to regulate the biggest, low-level entertainment district in the capital city.
Forty-seven-year-old Daeng Aziz, as he is familiarly known, caught the public's attention when he went to the office of the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) last week to speak on behalf of his fellow Kalijodo residents. He told Commissioner Hafid Abbas, whom he met, of his consternation over the planned eviction of his neighborhood. Then, along with other Kalijodo residents, Aziz went to the Jakarta Council of Representatives (DPRD) to protest the government's action that would deprive residents of their homes and their source of income, if Kalijodo were to be totally 'cleansed'.

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February 16, 2016 edition

The film industry in Indonesia is going through a golden period. Production of national films have gone up sharply compared to two decades ago. In 2014, the highest-ever number of films were produced: 115 titles. This is much higher than the number of films produced from 1991 to 2001, which was a total of 94.
The expansion in the film industry is getting the support of Joko Widodo's government through his 10th economic policy packet launched last Thursday. One of the points in the policy is to extricate the film industry and its related distribution business from the negative investment list (DNI), under Presidential Decree No. 39/2014 on the list of open and closed businesses in the field of capital investment.

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