Tikno Viewpoint

Raden Ajeng Kartini Recently on April 21 the Indonesian nation commemorate Kartini's Day . Actually Kartini's Day is similar to Mother's Day (celebrated in Indonesia on December 22) or International Women's Day. Perhaps to understand Mother's Day you need to understand a person in your life called Mother, and for the International Women's Day and Kartini's Day perhaps you need to understand the person in your life called wife or sister. If you are underestimating women then firstly you need to look at your mother . Am I wrong? In short: That is all for women. In wider meaning: That is how these special Day to further raise the awareness of Indonesian society or even the world - especially the women themselves - about women rights, their struggle for equality, and their important role in various spheres of life. This is also an occasion for Indonesian women to review how far their struggle get acknowledgment especially from the point of view of Indonesian tra...

Suicide bomber has attacked a mosque located in the police complex in Cirebon city . The bomb exploded yesterday on Friday, April 15, 2011 at around 12:20, resulted in 1 person died (suspected as the perpetrator) and 26 people injured. Most of the victims were police because the mosque is a facility within the police complex. According to the news in Indonesia, the perpetrator were identified aged between 20-25 years, 170 cm tall, oval-faces and short-haired, worn a jacket, a hat, and brought a prayer rug. Actually this is not the first time for the bomb attack on the mosque. Previously it had occurred at the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta on April 19, 1999. Nevertheless usually observers in Indonesia, even international, tend to associate the bomb cases to extremists. But I guess a bomb attack in the mosque for this time probably will triggers various discourse and assumption. It's clear that the target location of bomb attacks at this time was in the mosque and police station.

It's almost a month the news about Somali pirates appeared in various media in Indonesia. On March 16, 2011 an Indonesian vessel "Sinar Kudus" which was carrying nickel ore hijacked by Somali pirates in Arabian Sea in the voyage from Pomalaa, Southeast Sulawesi to Rotterdam. There were 20 hostages along with the vessel. The pirates demanded a ransom of US$ 3.5 million, but then fall to US$ 3 million. Well, this is an urgent situation and also a dilemma. After one month it seems these piracy cases still not found its end point. Therefore, some observers in Indonesia proposes military force to rescue the hostages, especially Somalia's Ambassador to Indonesia Mohamud Olow Barow had provide an opportunity for the Indonesian government to use military force in freeing the hostage. But there is the family of one hostage were objected because they are feared the military operation would be very risky to the safety of the hostages. Perhaps the reason of live safety has made ...

Indeed, recently the atmosphere in police station moreover the policeman duty was full of pressure. Each seconds must be ready to meet the call of duty, and must be able to move quickly to the crime scene. Moreover, recently in Indonesia occurred two events that cause high tension for them, namely the book-bomb terror and demonstration due to controversy in football. Nonetheless, police also human like us who need a little relax and joke (though momentary). So do not blame this young policeman to release a little tension. You better watch it before get blocked. This video has been aired yesterday afternoon by a TV station in Indonesia. Apparently this video is very popular after aired as I see today (after next 12 hours) it has 105,669 views on YouTube. Hopefully this will not become our national joke. If yes then I guess my friend Rummuser from India will be shocked to know his country's song Chaiyya-Chaiyya involved in this humor. PS: This video has been widespread in the social...

This is a very good news for Indonesian women, especially mothers. Karolin Margaret Natasa, a member of commission IX People's Representative Council of the Republic of Indonesia said that this year the central government freeing the childbirth costs for the whole citizen. According to minister, government has budgeted Rp 1.2 trillion in the state budget 2011, and each city / district will get the allocation of Rp 2 billion to free up the childbirth costs. Although this program applies to everyone, it seems the program is intended for the poor because Karolin says: "Jika masyarakat mampu juga ingin persalinannya gratis silakan saja, asalkan mau ditempatkan di rumah sakit kelas III. Kalau rumah sakit kelas mewah, jelas tidak bisa diberlakukan" . (English: "If rich people also want it free for childbirth, go ahead, provided that they're willing to be placed in third class hospital. If luxury hospital, obviously not included in this program") For me who liv...

Within this post, I just picked up the scattered stories from the media in Indonesia related to the three book-bomb attact on 15 March 2011. The first news that has attracted me to publish this post was Jakarta Globe titled "Democracy in Indonesia in 'Danger': Journalists Alliance": Judging from the package sent, the perpetrator was clearly trying to silence Ulil by killing him", said Nezar Patria, chairman of AJI (Aliansi Jurnalis Independen / The Alliance of Independent Journalists). The case has to be solved. An attack against an advocate of pluralism is a hard blow to our national ideals. Democracy in Indonesia is now in danger. Tempo Interaktif also published the letter (written in Indonesian) that found within the book-bomb packet addressed to Ulil. According to Jakarta Globe , there were three book-bombs. The first one addressed to Ulil Abshar Abdalla, co-founder of Jaringan Islam Liberal (English: Liberal Islam Network). The second package was addre...

While a lot of Indonesian children are not able to get a good education because their parents can not afford, on the other hand there are some of the elite society send their children to study abroad. As we know, send the kids to get education abroad requires substantial extra costs. Indeed, this is a situation of high-contrast. Here are some assumption of Indonesian society (perhaps also in other developing countries) towards oversea graduates (from developed countries) of their children: 1) Higher quality education. 2) More competitive in employment. 3) Certainly able to speak English. 4) They were considered elite. (psst: I should end this points with question mark). This post is not intended to look at one eye on education in Indonesia because there are many qualified people who graduate from Indonesia's school/university has sat on managerial level at large companies or become high officials in government. Beside that, there's a saying stated that quality of a person is no...

When reading news I found an interesting news reported by Antara News and Tempo Interaktif. There is mentioned that the two of Australia's famous newspaper, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, has reported confidential information about President Yudhoyono. The news on both newspaper were based on WikiLeaks's information which was leaked from the diplomatic wire of U.S. Embassy. Fellow blogger Martin Manurung, as I read on his profile was a President Director of PT Sekurindo Gada Patria (a company provides consultancy on managing risks and business continuity), has an interesting post about this issue titled Arti Heboh Wikileaks . Sadly he wrote in Bahasa Indonesia. He had quote and translate parts of the sentences from the Australian newspaper that he considers important (and I quote from his post), that is: ...The US diplomatic reports-obtained by WikiLeaks and provided exclusively to The Age - say that soon after becoming President in 2004, Dr Yudhoyono intervened in th...

As we know the pro-democracy movement was on the rise in the Middle East and North Africa. The victim started from Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Yemen, and the next candidate is Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, and maybe Bahrain. I also saw a wave of pro-democracy has brought a sense of worry for countries in the Middle East including Saudi Arabia. When pro-democracy movement shook Tunisia, oil prices has not been affected, likewise when these movement travel to Egypt, because these two countries was not a significant oil producer for the world. But when the pro-democracy protests spread to Libya, oil prices has jumped since mid-February when the rebellion in Libya increases. Thus Saudi Arabia was forced to increase its oil production in order to maintain the stability of world energy and cooling the overheated energy prices. The most frightening is that if pro-democracy demonstrations spread to Saudi Arabia . It seems that USA and European countries are aware that the longer th...