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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