You can’t help coming across some interesting stories in Indonesian newspapers. It’s getting closer now to the presidential elections and all presidential candidates and their running mates are required to undertake a medical examination.
For female candidates which will likely just be Megawati, they must abstain from sex ten days before their examination.
From the Jakarta Post:
The requirement for a female candidate to avoid having sex is to prevent the outcome of her medical checkup from showing “biased” results, IDI chairman Fachmi Idris said without elaborating.
I wonder how having …

The legislative election is just a few days away now. Aside from all of the campaign posters around town, I haven’t noticed any significant changes here. My local mall is opening two hours later on the day of the election this Thursday.
The presidential election will be held on the 8th of July. An anti-Megawati campaign on Facebook has been launched and the made the front page of some newspapers here. The Say “NO!!!” to Megawati currently has over 78,000 supporters.
The full list of Presidential candidates includes:
- …

On April 9 there will be an election to choose the members of parliament with the presidential election on July 8th.
Indonesia only had its first direct elections for president since 2004.
Not surprisingly, most people I have spoken to in Indonesia are pretty cynical about the whole process. The current president is President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono who is a member of the Democrat Party.
One of the biggest issues is corruption in the government. Indonesia ranks 126th on the Corruption Perception Index. Ahead of Cambodia, …

I haven’t felt well this week after coming back from Bukit Lawang, so I didn’t do as much as I would have liked on the blog.
It is getting closer to the elections here and every channel on television has non-stop reporting and debating – pity I can’t understand anything.
Here are some stories that I wanted to write about but didn’t get the chance.
Christianity Today who obviously have their own agenda, but I thought they had a good article on the spread of Shari’ah law in Indonesia, something which …

Just as I wrote the other day that the Australian government didn’t seem to be working much with Indonesia and now I read that Australia is working to create a disaster center in Jakarta.
The prime minister told reporters that a study by Australia and Indonesia found that half the world’s megacities are in locations vulnerable to earthquakes, and issues like climate change, urbanisation and poor land use were exacerbating the impact of other natural disasters.
“Also our region is subject to intense volcanic activity and now we see the consequence …

Politicians are often criticized for being all talk and no substance, but for me Kevin Rudd, Australia’s current Prime Minister seems to be one of the worst. I read through his speech which he gave at the Australia-Indonesia Conference Dinner which was published in the Jakarta Post.
I wonder if he was trying to be funny when he said, “in the year 2008, the President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and I met on seven occasions. We’ve now entered that into the Guinness Book of Records under the bilateral relations …