Man, this must be 'foreign' land

Man, this must be 'foreign' land

JAKARTA (JP): Name a foreign place that you don't need a passport to get into. Answer: Bekasi, West Java.

At least that is how Minister of Information Harmoko feels every time he visits the sprawling administrative town, adjacent to Jakarta, where new housing complexes using foreign names are mushrooming alongside the growing industrial estates.

"If you go to Bekasi, you'll feel like you're on foreign land. There's 'lakeside' this, 'highland' that...," Harmoko said on Saturday.

The minister was speaking to reporters after meeting with President Soeharto at the Bina Graha presidential office to report on the preparations for the upcoming National Awakening Day on May 20.

Harmoko, who heads the committee in charge of the preparations, said that President Soeharto would be launching a campaign on the correct use of the Indonesian language.

One aim of the campaign appears to be to reverse the creeping use of foreign terms.

"Why 'Lippo City', and not 'Lippo Pura'? And why not use 'taman' instead of 'garden'? Why should we go crazy with foreign terminology?," Harmoko asked. "Take 'Bina Graha' and 'Pondok Indah', for example. Don't they sound nice?"

The President feels, according to the minister, that promoting the proper and correct use of Bahasa Indonesia is part and parcel of the drive to strengthen national unity.

Besides the language campaign, Soeharto will also launch a national discipline drive on National Awakening Day.

Officials earlier said that the drive would aim to promote some simple but fundamental forms of discipline, such as queuing, maintaining cleanliness and showing up for work on time. (emb)