Indonesia president calls for unity to fight against extremism and inequality

JAKARTA: Indonesia’s president said that the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country needed to pull together to meet the threat of extremism and safeguard a constitution that enshrines religious freedom and diversity.

In an address to parliament ahead of Indonesia’s independence day today, President Joko Widodo – also known as Jokowi – peppered his speech with references to the need to address inequality in South-East Asia’s biggest economy and tackle the threat of radicalism.

Indonesian police on Tuesday arrested five suspected extremist militants and seized chemicals near the capital, Jakarta, that they said were being used to make bombs for attacks on the presidential palace at the end of August.

Religious tension in Indonesia has soared since late last year after extremist-led rallies saw Jakarta’s then governor, a member of a so-called double minority who is ethnic Chinese and Christian, put on trial during city elections over claims he insulted the Quran.

“We want to work together not only in creating an equitable economy, but also in ideological, political, social and cultural development.

“In the field of ideology, we have to strengthen our national consensus in safeguarding Pancasila, the 1945 Constitution, the unity of the Republic of Indonesia and Bhinneka Tunggal Ikaâ (unity in diversity),” he said.

Pancasila is Indonesia’s state ideology, which includes belief in god, the unity of the country, social justice and democracy, and which enshrines religious diversity in an officially secular system.

But there are worries about growing intolerance undermining a tradition of moderate Islam in a country where Muslims form about 85% of the population.

In April, the then Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, an ally of Jokowi, lost the bitterly fought city election to a Muslim rival and was later jailed for blasphemy, a sentence rights groups and international bodies condemned as unfair and politicised.

“Because the challenges we face now and will face in the future are not easy. We are still confronted with poverty and injustice; we are still facing global economic uncertainty, and we are also facing movements of extremism,” said Jokowi.

The president said the government needed to ensure that all state agencies “gain the highest trust of the people” and noted he had set up a presidential taskforce to oversee the teaching of the state ideology. — Reuters