RI HAS "BIG POWER" POTENTIALS :LEGISLATOR AGREES WITH MAHATHIR

former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Muhammad

Jakarta Forum - Jakarta, A senior legislator here Monday concurred with former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Muhammad`s view that Indonesia had the potentials to become "the seventh big power" in the world.

But Tjahjo Koemolo, chairman of the Indonesian Demcoracy Party-Struggle (PDIP) faction in the House of Representatives (DPR), also said to really achieve world power status, "we need a leader who is firm, consistent, and courageous in making decisions, and able to make changes. We also need to take stock again of the nation`s real potentials."

Speaking to reporters here Monday, Tjahjo said , with its large population and geopolitically strategic location in the Pacific, Indonesia indeed had the potentials of becoming "the `new giant" in the global arena of the third millennium.

"Indonesia`s strategic position, large population and enormous natural resources will be important assets in achieving world power status, if the state is managed properly," he said.

Indonesia`s large population - the fifth largest in the world - had made it a vast market for all sorts of goods so that it was understandable that many foreign quarters and countries considered Indonesia as a potential world power, he said.

What only needed to be done now, according to Tjahjo, was to support efforts to have a state management that was able to see all of the country`s potentials, and change the present development paradigm into one that was fully based on those potentials.

He said he hoped that in due course of time, a national leader would emerge who would refuse to be dictated by any foreign power and be able to establish a state management characterized by a nationalism based on the Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution.

Tjahjo also stressed the importance of once again taking stock of the country`s real potentials in order to be able to improve the nation`s human resources, laws and regulations.

"This is important so that the business and investment climates are legally guaranteed, and likewise is the implementation of simultaneous bureaucratic reforms to create a corruption-free and public-interest serving bureaucracy," he said.

In short, Tjahjo said, a total revolution was needed to accelerate the process towards Indonesia`s future position as a developed nation, independent economy, sovereign nation in all fields, especially in politics, ideology and law, as well as in cultural identity and in terms of international esteem.

Source: Antara News