Year-end Special Edition

Year-end Special Edition

Three elections made 2004 the year of elections here -- no doubt
about that. The legislative election on April 5 saw nearly 150
million Indonesians choose 550 members of the House of
Representatives and 128 members of the newly established Regional
Representatives Council.

Then there were two rounds of direct presidential elections on
July 5 and Sept. 20, the first ever in the country's history. And
most of all, those elections took place in a relatively peaceful
manner.

The successful elections have allowed Indonesia to claim
itself the third largest democracy in the world after India and
the United States.

But democracy does not necessarily bring security and welfare
to the people.

Security remained the main agenda in 2004, as it has in other
years since Soeharto stepped down in 1998. Terror attacks
continued, with the latest targeting the Australian Embassy in
September. Sporadic sectarian violence continued to plague
Central Sulawesi, although it has not erupted into the sort of
massive and prolonged clashes between Muslims and Christians that
left thousands of people killed between 1999 and 2001 there.

Separatist movements and the government's countermoves in Aceh
and Papua have also meant peace continues to elude people in both
of those provinces. The government downgraded martial law in Aceh
into a state of civil emergency, but on the ground, armed
conflict has gone on unabated. Thousands are still stranded in
refugee camps in Aceh.

This suffering was compounded on Sunday, when the third most
powerful earthquake in the recorded history of the world (8.9 on
the Richter Scale), followed by massive tidal waves, destroyed
and inundated many coastal areas of Aceh, killing thousands,
although the death toll is expected to rise dramatically in the
coming days.

Disasters and calamities, though, are not the monopoly of the
country's westernmost province. Earthquakes have devastated many
other parts of the country, the two latest being in Alor, East
Nusa Tenggara, and Nabire, Papua.

In addition to those natural disasters, the nation still saw
plenty of other accidents, killing dozens of people on the roads,
rails and in the air.

Surprisingly, there has been little bad news about flooding in
Jakarta this rainy season, which has become an annual catastrophe
for those living in this capital city. In the absence of major
flooding so far, the poor continued to suffer as the Jakarta
administration upped measures to evict them from slum areas.

Unemployment also remains high, with new job seekers flooding
the job market, at a rate much higher than the growth of job
openings.

This, despite a rosy economic picture on most other fronts:
decent economic growth of over 4 percent, low inflation, low
interest rates and a vibrant stock market. One major blow,
however, has been the weakening rupiah, which defied the trend of
other regional currencies. Those have strengthened against the
U.S. dollar.

In this special year-end edition, we are presenting our
analysis of various events in the country over the year 2004 with
expert views on what the year 2005 will look like.

It is our hope that the economy will continue to perform and
democracy will continue to blossom next year.

Year-end schedule:

Monday Dec. 27 : National and City
Tuesday Dec. 28 : Business and World
Wednesday Dec. 29: Features and Sports
Thursday Dec. 30 : Outlook 2004
Friday Dec. 31 : Outlook 2004