Before the Sacred Red and White Flag Flies

At 4:00 AM WIB, while most of their peers are still fast asleep, 76 candidates for the national-level Heritage Flag Hoisting Troop (Paskibraka) must already rise. Their rooms are tidied, and prayers are performed. After breakfast, they prepare to face hours of training. There are no mobile phones to dispel the quiet, no opportunity to leave the dormitory for a change of scenery. What awaits them is the field, commands, and new friends they previously did not know.

The Pusat Pengembangan Sumber Daya Manusia (PPSDM) facility of the Ministry of Education and Culture in Depok, West Java, has been their training ground since 14 July. The field has been transformed to replicate the layout of the Merdeka Palace courtyard in Jakarta, where the duplicate heritage flag will be hoisted during the 81st Independence Day ceremony.

However, the journey to reach this national training camp began long before July. The selection process is carried out in stages, starting from the school level, then district/city, province, and finally central verification. Each stage leaves fewer candidates, until only 76 students are chosen to represent their regions at the national level.

Johanes Matius Paulus Rumsayor, an 11th-grade student from SMA Negeri 1 Sentani, Papua, began his journey from his school’s Paskibra selection. He served as a school Paskibra member in 2025. A year later, a bigger opportunity came. Johanes passed the district-level selection, succeeded at the provincial level, and was then chosen to attend the central verification stage in Jakarta. After a two-day wait, his name was finally called as one of the students entitled to participate in the national-level training. Now, Johanes stands in formation among the chosen youth from all 38 provinces of Indonesia, sharing stories of their respective struggles to reach this point.