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Search Results: Widodo

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Is Prabowo Subianto qualified to be Indonesia's next president?

    • Pat Walsh
    • 17 January 2024
    5 Comments

    Over 200,000,000 Indonesians are currently weighing up who to elect from three candidates as their next president. Australia has nothing to gain from a Prabowo presidency and a lot to lose. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Australia's illogic over Timor and West Papua

    • Pat Walsh
    • 13 August 2019
    8 Comments

    One wonders if the Prime Minister will be aware of the supreme irony of these two events, the lack of logic in Australia's conflicting policies on the fate of the two peoples, and Canberra's flexible approach to the much vaunted international rules based order when it does not serve pragmatic national interests.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Indonesian democracy is at a crossroads

    • Nicholas Bugeja
    • 02 July 2019
    7 Comments

    Indonesian democracy has proven resilient to challenge and made inroads into combatting problems that have beset the country for decades. But a crossroads approaches. A failure to manage religious radicalism and intolerance, corruption, and other social tensions may imperil or destabilise this democratic epoch.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Scott Morrison's cowboy foreign policy

    • Erin Cook
    • 18 December 2018
    4 Comments

    Right wing commentators say the recognition of West Jerusalem as capital is a triumph over bullying Muslim countries within the region. This line highlights how extraordinarily unprepared the Australian right wing is for the rapid realignment which is pushing Australia into the region and away from the traditional Western powers.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    State of the death penalty in Southeast Asia

    • Erin Cook
    • 14 November 2018
    2 Comments

    With such a wide range of crimes under the death penalty banner, what will sentencing in the new Malaysia look like? And what timeline can be expected, given the government has a diverse suite of policy priorities for its first term.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Ahok is innocent and Indonesia needs him

    • Pat Walsh
    • 15 May 2017
    11 Comments

    Did he denounce Islam as 'evil' like the American evangelist Franklin Graham? Did he publicly denounce God as 'stupid' like Stephen Fry? On the contrary. Ahok is deeply respectful of Islam and has many Muslim supporters. The affair has done a serious disservice to Indonesia, presenting it as fanatical, racist and sectarian. While these perceptions are unfair, the affair also reveals some aspects of contemporary Indonesia that are obscured by Canberra's often lavish praise of our important neighbour.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Indonesia shows its ugly side with regressive executions

    • Pat Walsh
    • 29 April 2015
    16 Comments

    Indonesia is a country of great promise with a significant, maybe crucial, contribution to make to our troubled world. As a very large, pluralist, Muslim-majority democracy it offers a template for other societies in transition. President SBY was acutely aware of this opportunity and through his democracy forums and other initiatives did much to re-brand Indonesia in this positive light. All this good work is being undone by the anal, small-town thinking the executions represent.

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  • The death penalty is always political

    • Frank Brennan
    • 31 March 2015
    10 Comments

    Some of the Australian commentary on the Indonesian justice system has been understandably very critical.  But living here in the USA for a year, I have come to realise that the death penalty infects every justice system no matter how good and robust it is.  In the end, the death penalty is always political.  That’s why I am very grateful to Pope John Paul II who changed his position.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why Indonesians joke about our Chan and Sukumaran clemency pleas

    • Michael Mullins
    • 09 March 2015
    31 Comments

    President Joko Widodo has appeared consistently unmoved by Australia's pleas on behalf of Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan. Many Indonesians look upon Australian protests – especially those of our PM – as a joke. They would take us more seriously if we gave a thought to the nationals of other countries who are also on death row, and made it clear that we are not disingenuous when we talk about the moral abhorrence of the death penalty.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Nice guy Jokowi a death penalty strong man

    • Pat Walsh
    • 04 February 2015
    17 Comments

    The execution of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran is expected to take place on Nusakembangan, a prison island off Central Java. Visitors there are greeted by a sign which translates: 'They are not criminals, just lost people, and it is never too late to repent'. To be executed after you repent, however, is certainly too late. It also diminishes Indonesia. But let’s not write Indonesia off.     

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Accommodating Indonesia's capital punishment barbarism

    • Michael Mullins
    • 19 January 2015
    12 Comments

    Bali Nine drug runners Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan are on track to be executed by firing squad during the first half of this year. Tony Abbott deserves praise for his statement abhorring the death penalty, but not for his qualification that Australia should avoid jeopardising its relationship with Indonesia by its representations on behalf of Sukumaran and Chan. Such caution did not apply when Australia turned back asylum seeker boats, and any Indonesian upset did not last long.  

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Nailing Indonesia's next president

    • Pat Walsh
    • 24 June 2014
    9 Comments

    On 9 July, Indonesians will vote on their next president by punching a hole in a ballot paper with a large nail. Timor-Leste used the same system for its historic independence ballot in 1999. The issues differ of course but the choices to be made are equally stark. Democratic development and human rights in Indonesia will either advance or regress depending on who is nailed next month.

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