JAKARTA: Indonesia’s president said on Wednesday that the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country needed to pull together to meet the threat of extremism and safeguard a constitution that enshrines religious freedom and diversity.
In an address to parliament ahead of Thursday’s independence day, President Joko Widodo peppered his speeches with references to the need to address inequality in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy and tackle the threat of radicalism.
Indonesian police have tightened security ahead of the independence day holiday and on Tuesday arrested five suspected militants and seized chemicals they said were being used to make bombs for attacks on the presidential palace.
“We want to work together not only in creating an equitable economy, but also in ideological, political, social and cultural development,” said
Widodo.
“In the field of ideology, we have to strengthen our national consensus in safeguarding Pancasila, the 1945 Constitution, the unity of the Republic of Indonesia and “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika” (unity in diversity),” he said.
In a second speeches, a state of the nation address, Widodo said his administration’s focus this year was to ensure that the benefits from an average 5 per cent economic growth in the last few years should be felt by everybody.
Despite its growing middle class, inequality in Indonesia remains high. Indonesia’s wealthiest 1 per cent control 49.3 per cent of its wealth, Credit Suisse said in a report issued last November, which placed Indonesia among countries with the most unequal distribution of wealth in the world.
The president touched on efforts to cut red tape and said that moves to certify land would be accelerated. Disputes over land ownership frequently hold up infrastructure projects.
“For 72 years we have been independent, but while other countries are looking at outer space, we in our beloved country have not finished land certification for our people,” he said.
On national security issues, the president said Indonesia needed to “resist the theft of our sea resources” and should not be afraid to keep sinking illegal fishing boats in its waters.
Indonesia has sunk hundreds of illegal fishing boats and its navy and coastguard have had skirmishes with China and countries such as Vietnam over fishing in parts of the South China Sea. — Reuters
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