April 5, 2016 edition
Cover Story
Not long after President Joko Widodo made Susi Pudjiastuti minister of maritime affairs and fisheries, she launched some daring initiatives. With just a junior high school diploma to her name, Susi succeeded in opening the public's eyes on the massive theft of our marine resources by foreign fishermen. Her sinking of foreign ships suspected to be involved in illegal fishing made her popular. Traditional fishermen are happy with Susi's policies. However, a group calling itself the National Movement of the Indonesian Fisheries Society is challenging her.
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Sidelines
With this dramatic sentence, the Communist Manifesto in 1848 depicted the arrival of an era when capital enters social life. Marx and Engels were not predicting the future: They were merely describing how astonishingly the bourgeoisie change the world. And set it quaking.
But in the 21st century, the sentence has become a kind of prophecy.
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Interview
The huge education budget20 percent of the total state budgetdemands a significant improvement in the quality of the national education system, something that Indonesians have been yearning for years. Now, it is up to Education and Culture Minister Anies Baswedan to respond to those demands.
The first step that Anies has started is publicizing all data on public education. The Education Balance Sheet publication contains information that until recently was not available to the public, such as the number of students in schools, the proportion of students to teachers, the number of damaged and broken-down schools, the quality of teachers based on teacher competence evaluations, the different education budgets between national and regional budgets, the budget allocation per student and the number of accredited schools.
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Horizons
RUSTONO will never forget that special moment, some three years back, on a flight from Japan to Indonesia with his mother Paryumi. Up in the air, his mother reminisced about Rustono's life-long dream of flying.
Rustono smiled, recalling the time when, as a boy, he tended his neighbor's buffalos in a village some 25 kilometers from the town of Grobogan in Central Java. Lying on the back of a buffalo, he watched a tiny plane up in the sky. "I dreamed of flying right away," Rustono told Tempo English in an interview two weeks ago. Boy Rustono imagined himself flying to many countries.
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Outreach
THE little girl looks anxious, pacing back and forth in the house. She is eager to leave so she can show off her new shoes at school. The rain, however, has other ideas.
Impatient, she decides to try out an old-school superstition by throwing her underwear onto the roof. The tactic works, and the rain stops.
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Environment
A merican actors Adrien Brody and Fisher Stevens accompanied Leonardo DiCaprio on his site visit last week. During his two-day trip to the ecosystemthe last place on earth where Sumatran tigers, rhinos, elephants and orangutans still live side-by-side in the wildDiCaprio stopped by an orangutan sanctuary and visited an elephant conservation group in East Aceh. It is in this corner of the ecosystem that lowland forests, the favored climates for many of the ecosystem's critically endangered iconic species, are best preserved.
On his Twitter page, DiCaprio called for solidarity with those fighting to protect Leuser from new roads, oil palm plantations, mines and logging operations. "Lets work together to #SaveLeuserEcosystem, a biodiversity hotspot," DiCaprio tweeted, urging his 15 million followers to sign a petition addressed to President Jokowi, Home Affairs Minister Tjahjo Kumolo and Aceh Governor Zaini Abdullah at change.org.
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Asean & Beyond
Peter Popham's book The Lady and The Generals published last March tells the story of Aung San Suu Kyi getting upset in an interview with BBC journalist Mishal Husain two years ago. Their discussion soured after the journalist asked about Suu Kyi's silence about the 2013 persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State.
She initially tried to ward off the question by not really answering it. Both Muslims and Buddhists, Suu Kyi said, were victims. Husain persisted, saying it was the Rohingyas who were being persecuted in Rakhine, not Buddhists. After the interview, Suu Kyi was heard muttering, "No one told me I was to be interviewed by a Muslim."
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Arround The Archipelago
The government will soon roll out a program requiring citizens under 17 years of age to acquire a children's ID card (KIA). The regencies of Bone Bolango and Gorontalo in Gorontalo province will start pilot sites for the new requirement.
Parents in the regencies will be required to arrange for their child's identity papers at their local population and civil registration service office.
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Law
Ash and debris were all that remained of the U-shaped prison complex in Bengkulu last week.
The riot erupted after the Bengkulu National Narcotics Agency (BNN) officers entered the facility to take away drug convict Edison alias Aseng bin Irawan Firdaus. "We detained him as part of our investigation into the narcotics ring operating inside the prison," Bengkulu BNN chief Sr. Police Comr. Budiharso said last Thursday.
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National
PRAMONO Anung's two-hour lunch with President Jokowi at the State Palace was an important one. The former secretary-general of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) said the two discussed a variety of issues.
When Tempo asked whether an impending cabinet reshuffle was one of the topics, Pramono demurred. "I'm his Seskab (cabinet secretary). The matters I need to know are only for me," he said.
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Economy
The heated debate pitting two powerful ministries on whether the LNG (liquified natural gas) plant of the US$15 billion Masela offshore gas project should be built offshore as a floating LNG facility or built onshore several hundred kilometers away on either Aru or Tanimbar island has finally subsided. Recently, President Jokowi finally decided to side with Coordinating Maritime Minister Rizal Ramli, who argued for an onshore LNG plant as it would have a broader 'multiplier' impact on the region's local economy.
In contrast, the mines and energy ministry agreed with the two project sponsors, INPEX from Japan (with 65 percent interest) and Shell from the Netherlands (with 35 percent), an offshore, floating LNG plant built right next to the gas field would be more cost- and time-efficient. They argued that an offshore option would not require building either a 600- or a 200-kilometer-long pipeline across Indonesia's eastern Arafura sea, depending on which island is chosen. Also, it does not require costly and time consuming land clearings and permits to build an onshore facility.
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Column
Last month's incident, in which two armed Chinese Coast Guard vessels seized back a captured trawler inside Indonesia's 12-nautical mile territorial limit has presented the Joko Widodo government and the Indonesian military with a whole new ball game in the South China Sea they can hardly ignore.
Jakarta may not be a claimant to the disputed Spratly Islands, but China's assertion that the 200-ton Kway Fey was in 'traditional Chinese fishing grounds' suggests Beijing does not recognize Indonesia's 200-mile economic exclusion zone (EEZ) either.
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Opinion
SINCE 2009, Pertamina and private oil companies have had thousands of barrels of crude oil stolen from their pipelines in South Sumatra. State losses from such thefts amounted to hundreds of billions of rupiah as authorities stood by powerlessly.
In 2013, the State Intelligence Agency (BIN) launched an investigation and presented its findings to Pertamina representatives and security officials. There was no followup although the companies involved in the theft network were clearly named in the investigation report codenamed Belinda Hitam (Black River). The report also showed the involvement of police and army personnel. The police later arrested dozens of thieves mostly from Musi Banyuasin regency but their crackdown only targeted field operators.
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Indicator
THE emergence of app-based taxis has aroused the ire of conventional taxi companies. On March 22, hundreds of taxi drivers under the Association of Land Transport Drivers (Organda) held a demonstration in Jakarta. The rally triggered huge traffic jams and turned violent in several locations.
The taxi drivers wanted the government to ban the apps. They complained of losing customers to the cheaper, friendlier, faster service. Their incomes, they said, plummeted.
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Tempo Talks
Improving Connectivity, Boosting Cooperation
This year, Indonesia and India mark 75 years of diplomatic relations. However, the ties between the two nations have existed much longer, predating the establishment of the Republic of Indonesia and the Republic of India. These connections span social, cultural, religious, economic, and trade aspects. But do those close ties of the past have any bearing on the present relationship? Why is there no direct flight between the capitals of the two countries?
Indian Ambassador to Indonesia and Timor-Leste, Sandeep Chakravorty, shares his views on this matter at TEMPO TALKS.
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