Friday, August 17, 2012

Happy Independence Day Indonesia!

Thanks to my fellow YES alum friends on facebook, I found out that today is Indonesia’s Independence day! Unfortunately, I wasn’t there to celebrate, but I still dressed up in red and white with my little homemade Indonesian flag to show my support! 

Here’s a little history about Indonesia’s Independence (thank you Wikipedia)
Sukarno- 1st President
On August 17th, 1945, Indonesia declared its independence from the Netherlands in a Proclamation of Indonesian Independence.  After several years of struggle, Indonesia became free of hundreds of years of imperialistic power by the Dutch and shortly by the Japanese, and became its own republic. Nationalist war hero, Sukarno, became Indonesia’s first president following the country’s independence, after overcoming colonial opposition and imprisonment. He served as a figurehead in the new Indonesian government for 22 years, while the country got off to a rocky start with disagreements over which type of government Indonesia would have. His idea of ‘guided democracy’ was viewed as too autocratic by some, and eventually the system failed.  He was replaced by Suharto, who established a military-based, centralized government, that was successful initially, but later caused controversy. Eventually Suharto resigned from the presidency, and led way to the representative democracy that Indonesia has today.
Ok, I tried to sum up a lot of info into a short-ish paragraph, so hopefully i got the gist of it. Dirgahayu RI! ( i think this means Long live Indonesia!)

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