Indonesia's new hobby

Indonesia's new hobby

The country has a new hobby -- increasing its provinces. A province begets "children" and "grandchildren", along with districts and municipalities.

The result is complicated. It not only confuses pupils on answering such questions as how many provinces Indonesia has, but it also has more serious consequences. Indonesia suddenly needs many governors, district heads and mayors.

For sure, this has an impact on state funds. Why did the country suddenly have this strange hobby? The answers are many. One of them is that reform has encouraged many people to feel that they are capable of becoming governors, district heads and mayors.

This hobby might disturb the general election in 2004.

It is high time we stop it. From the point-of-view of the general election, it has two bad sides. On the one hand, it might give advantages to a certain party, and on the other hand, it has the potential to hamper the election.

Indonesia is indeed a vast nation, currently being "dwarfed" and "deflated" by this hobby.

-- Media Indonesia, Jakarta

;; ANPAk..r.. Otherop-war-protests War protests JP/6/

War protests

American and British military forces ... increased the intensity of the war against Saddam Hussein's regime that has brutalized Iraq and threatened world peace for more than a decade.

One of the most disturbing elements so far is that anti-war protests in the United States have become more intense, too.

While we, and surely other Americans, were at philosophical odds over the past few months with the protest movement, it's recognized that the right to assemble and exercise free speech are foundations of this country. And many Americans who participated in earlier peace rallies likely are embarrassed by what they are seeing.

What has been exposed over the past few days is a hard-core element behind the protests that is more anti-American than pro- peace. Violence and aggressive civil disobedience hardly are calling cards of people who simply don't want war.

These protests are doing more than blocking city streets. They are taking stretched-thin law enforcement away from more critical assignments related to homeland security.

-- The Greenville News, Greenville, South Carolina

;; ANPAk..r.. Otherop-TV-US-POWs On the televising of American POWs JP/6/

On the televising of American POWs

The international outcry over the display of American casualties and prisoners on Iraqi state television is thoroughly justified. This was not only a flagrant violation of the Geneva convention, which requires that prisoners of war "must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity;" it was also an offense against the very fundamentals of human decency.

For all his pledges that the U.S. would treat Iraqi prisoners of war humanely, however, Bush's words rang just a little hollow. There were times, especially at the start, when the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay came very close to being paraded before television cameras. They were shown in conditions that seemed designed to humiliate, confined to metal cages, led hooded and blindfolded to interrogation sessions that were not, and could not, be monitored. Bush's call for U.S. prisoners to be treated humanely would command more credibility and wider sympathy if his administration had appeared more amenable to accepting rules that most other civilized countries accept.

-- The Independent, London