In commemorating the 61st anniversary of independence day, Indonesian bloggers have many ways to celebrate it.
Agusti Anwar highlights the meaning of flag as a symbol of nation and nationalism:
Flag is indeed a formal expression of recognition. To that effect, if a people dispose or pull out recognition of others, accepting or protesting, the flag would do service either way. Protesters of different nationals would burn the flag of the opposed and that has been a full statement at best.
Remember when our founding fathers and patriots fought against the colonial power of Dutch, those brave young heroes ran to the front against the shooting bullets to pull down the red-white-blue colonial flag just to rip out the blue part and put it high again. The red and white was on the air. The red and white is on the air. And that time, patriots fell down in smile.
He reminds us, however, that the same national flag could mean both ways, good or bad:
Yet, when everyday you read news on corruption, that so many of the rich are in fact embezzlers or pirates of national budgets, you may worry that the extravagant red-and-white exhibition simply equals theatrical gambits of falseness. You may then worry that short after the celebration of 17 August, the house owners would be seen in TV with handcuff and sadly bowing heads, being brought to court for corruption trial. However, you may also worry too much.
Sid Bachtiar, an Indonesian software engineer stays in New Zealand, writes an interesting finding about some names of softwares which seems incidentally similar to familiar names in Indonesia:
From historical perspectiveHerman Akbar Fajar writes an interesting story that it’s only one year ago that the Dutch which colonized and ruled Indonesia more than three and half decade recognized and agreed about the date of Indonesia’s independence day:
The Netherlands, having taken in a number of loyalist exiles who (for various reasons) viewed Sukarno’s government as illegitimate, would only recognize the date of the final withdraw of Dutch forces from Indonesia on December 27, 1949. This changed in 2005 when the Dutch Foreign Minister, Bernard Bot, made several well-publicized goodwill gestures: officially accepting Indonesian independence as beginning on August 17, 1945; expressing a regret for all that suffering caused by the fighting during the war; and attending 61th anniversary commemoration of Sukarno’s independence proclamation, as a part of the first Dutch delegation to do so.
In the meanwhile, Lalita, a mother of two daughters, expresses her concern over the ignorance among Indonesian youth who even don’t have a clue about who wrote the national anthem:
Today, we are celebrating our 61st independence day …. And how sad to watch the news that many of the younger generation don’t even know the composer of Indonesian anthem.
I asked my daughters whether they know about the composer of Indonesian anthem, and they gave me the same answer as seen on TV.
Among young generation, independence day seems to mean nothing. For them there are more important things to do: to fight to get proper education and better job.
