Regional Security and Multilateral Cooperation

In our world today, there has been an emergence of various groups that embarked in violent acts, extreme measures and even terror as means to fight for their political aspirations and goals. These activities are fully organized, with such cross borders strong network between similar groupings to share experiences, exchange training program, and arms support. The cooperation between groupings are solid, real and sophisticated, with the support of sufficient information technology.

In this time of challenge, we are in a view that there should be an equivalent cooperation between states and exchange of information on the activities of these extremists, which has undermined the law and goes further of threatening states’ integrity.

To answer these challenges, Indonesia has established the “Indonesia Center of Law Enforcement and Cooperation (ICLEC)” as the follow up actions of the regional conference on Combating Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing, in Bali on December 17 and 18, 2003 and the Bali Regional Ministerial Meeting on Counter-Terrorism on February 4, 2004. With the establishment of ICLEC, we have stated our commitment to have concrete cooperation between states in the form of training, exchange information and other supporting activities to fight these global threats.

In these concerted efforts among states to address the regional security issues, Indonesia is in the view that these cooperation should not violate the sovereignty of the participating countries. Based on the principle, we have participated in the coordinated patrols with our neighboring countries to ensure the safety of international passage within our territory, to prevent intervention from certain country to internationalize the security problem at the sea passage, which serves as huge economic assets for countries in East Asia, and in particular for countries in Southeast Asia.

Economic Growth and Social Progress

On the economic growth and social progress, the Southeast Asian countries have agreed to set up a protocol to develop the “ASEAN-China Free Trade Area”. The agreement should be immediately followed by concrete cooperation in the near future.

In particular, each country should take into account the balance between the economic growth and social development. In our view, there should be a special attention towards farmers in rural areas, by providing supports for the development of capital industries. We need to give the support, to maintain the value of agriculture commodities, to ensure that the industry will remain as the source of job opportunities for the people. We realize that we will need to open possibilities to have agricultural trade between Asian countries, however the effort should not undermine the agricultural commodities itself such as rice, corn, sugar and soy beans. To certain extent, each country could apply for 0-15 percent of custom for these imported commodities. In this regard, there should be a common agreement, to protect our own farmers, which have yet to develop a strong competitiveness.

We also underlined the needs to have stronger cooperation to provide protection for our small and medium enterprises, in particular those at the field of handicraft. To support small and medium enterprises, we should have an exchange of experience on providing training and capital for the grooming industries in Asia.

Political Party’s Building and National Development

The basic norms of the Pancasila are the guidelines for our society to ensure the integrity of the Republic of Indonesia. We have deliberated the rulings to balance the authority between central government and regional administration. These rulings are aimed to have an equivalent spread of development across the vast country. The implemented wide-ranging autonomy, will not threaten the territorial integrity of the country, as we also set the ground rules to balance the financial allocation between the central government and regional administration, which take into account the differing socio-cultural nature and other geographical factors.

The latest political development in the country is marked with the successful, peaceful, free and fair election seasons. In the current reform era, the political development and dynamic of political parties reached its primetime, lead the country toward true democracy. With these new development, our people is ready to step forward and join the international community, which based upon meritocracy as the ground rules of relations among the citizen of the world.