Congress wants 'Bahasa' mandatory for companies

A. Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Formulating a law on Bahasa Indonesia (the official Indonesian language), good and correct language use by the media and improvement of Indonesian language instruction to foreign speakers were among the recommendations resulting from the eighth Indonesian Language Congress.

Congress committee chairman and the Language Center head Dendy Sugono said on Friday after the closing ceremony that Article 36 on state language in the amended Constitution allows the formulation of a law on Bahasa Indonesia. The article stipulates "further direction on national flag, language, state symbol and national anthem will be regulated by law".

The Language Center and the Language Supervisory Board are currently drafting the law, including sanctions that could be applied to institutions and companies that fail to use the national language.

Dendy refused to give details and only said the law still needed further study.

He also said that so far, there had been no legal basis to force institutions and companies to use "good and correct" Indonesian.

"We want companies' names and brands to be in Indonesian. We are not targeting individuals," he said.

Minister of National Education Malik Fadjar rejected the recommendation on formulating the law, saying it was unnecessary.

"We already have too many laws .... The last thing we need is another law to rule our lives," he said.

Malik said the national language had a strong legal basis as an element of the Youth Pledge in 1928, and as it was stipulated in the State Constitution.

Undeterred by the minister's rejection, Dendy said he would gather public support on the proposal.

The congress also pointed out that many television programs were being presented in colloquial Indonesian language combined with different dialects, except on state-run TVRI.

Some young TV presenters even mixed English and Indonesian in narrating their programs.

Earlier, legal expert Harkristuti Harkrisnowo suggested that long sentences and foreign terms be avoided in legal documents because laymen could not understand them easily.

The four-day biennial congress was attended by 843 participants from Indonesia and several foreign countries. As many as 61 local and 18 foreign experts on Indonesian literature and linguistics presented papers.

Bahasa Indonesia has lost its popularity as the language curriculum, as set up by the Language Center, focuses only on the good and correct use of the language, to the exclusion of socio- cultural evolution and developments.

The center has been dubbed the "language regime" used by former president Soeharto to suppress critical opinions and to spread euphemism. It still maintains its "good and correct" campaign, five years after Soeharto's downfall.