Hong Kong handover

Every day the news of Hong Kong's handover to China is beamed on CNN, as it is a major historic event in terms of international law and politics.

Were it not for the colony's economic and strategic importance as an Asian outpost, the big fuss about its return to China, with the expiry of the 99-year lease on July 1, 1997, would be absent from the newsreels.

Listening to the eloquent pronouncements of Hong Kong legislators on the historic event on CNN, one gets the impression that they bespeak their prolific intellectual capabilities and realistic outlook, in full appraisal of the existing political circumstances weighed against vested economic interests. It is worth noting that English is spoken as if a native tongue. Lucid prose emerges from conversations in interviews.

All this suggests that in the process of building a country, individual capabilities and achievements play a vital role. Each individual performance provides the basis for the overall accomplishment at the national level. And in the end, as the result of such accomplishment, examples abound that however small a country's population or territorial extent, it succeeds to gain a respectable status among wealthy countries.

It is obvious that such prodigious achievement should be attributed to the advancement and qualities of education, with its fruits widely reaped by the populace.

Improving education plays such a crucial role in a country's development that British Prime Minister Tony Blair used this as his theme in the recent election campaign.

Then, on Larry King's talk show on June 24, 1997, U.S. Vice President Al Gore emphasized need to improve education. And when the Second Lady, Tipper Gore, later joined the show, she said that the future of a country lies in the education of its children.

Needless to say, the truth of this maxim will not be confined within national boundaries, but will instead find universal acclaim and application, irrespective of ideologies.

SAM SUHAEDI

Jakarta