Youth told to avoid fanaticism, promote pluralism

Slamet Susanto and A. Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta/Jakarta

Yogyakarta-based presidential candidate Governor Sri Sultan Hamengkubuwono X called on youths on Tuesday to avoid myopic nationalism and promote pluralism instead.

The governor, who is also the Sultan of Yogyakarta, said youths should not be trapped in a narrow religious outlook, nor tribal or political sectarianism.

"So far, we have considered others of a different 'color' are not part of us as a nation," he said at a ceremony in Yogyakarta commemorating Youth Pledge Day.

He said people's differences in religion, ethnicity and political affiliation should be seen as social capital, and that the spirit of the second Youth Congress in 1928, in which youths of varying backgrounds came together as a single community, should be kept alive.

In the 1928 congress held in Jakarta, the youths pledged that they belonged to one undivided nation, one motherland and one common language.

Separately, Vice President Hamzah echoed Hamengkubuwono, calling on the youths of Indonesia to be independent and be pioneers of the reform era, as were the youths in 1928.

Hamzah also chairs the United Development Party (PPP), which, along with the Crescent Star Party (PBB) and certain elements in the bureaucracy, is continuing moves to try and impose the Islamic sharia law on the country.

The commemoration of Youth Pledge Day at the Vice Presidential Palace was also attended by Minister of National Education Malik Fadjar, State Minister of Research and Technology M. Hatta Radjasa, National Police Chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar and House of Representatives Speaker Akbar Tandjung.

While state officials commemorated the day with formal events, students marked the day by staging rallies across the country.

Dozens of youths in Yogyakarta condemned the neo-liberalism, neo-imperialism and hedonism that have undermined the spirit of youths today.

Following the fall of Soeharto and his New Order regime in 1998, those problems that had been swept under the carpet by his autocratic rule resurged and erupted as sectarian conflicts in many parts of the country.

Since then, violent and bloody ethnic conflicts have broken out in Kalimantan, religious conflicts in Maluku and Poso, Central Sulawesi, and a separatist conflict in Aceh.

Noted sociologists called on the government and the people on Monday to address these problems in order to keep the nation from disintegrating.