Corinne Podger – Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has told Radio Australia that Australian troops will stay as long as East Timor says it needs them.

Stephanie March – East Timor's state secretary for defence, Julio Tomas Pinto, wants to send more of his troops to Australia for training.

Yogyakarta – Over 5,000 disabled people in Sleman regency might lose their voting rights in the upcoming legislative election if special aid is not put in place for them.

Jakarta – Ten years down the track, regional autonomy may be doing more harm than good, the founding father of the country's current self-reliance model says.

ID Nugroho, Surabaya – Gresik has followed other regencies protesting against the blatant disregard of a recent rise in minimum wages by employers, which it has called on to respect wor

Nivell Rayda – One of the country's most senior Muslim leaders on Thursday threatened to issue an edict banning people from voting for the incumbent president in the upcoming election b

Andra Wisnu, Jakarta – Islam and yoga share more similarities than some parties would like to admit, a seminar concluded Thursday.

Indra Harsaputra, Surabaya – The upcoming legislative election has already been tainted by money politics, fueled by the fierce competition among the hundreds of thousands of candidates

Lilian Karunungan – Indonesia's rupiah erased losses on speculation the central bank intervened to support the currency. Government bonds rose.

Irawaty Wardany – The already-tarnished integrity of the country's legislators is once again under the spotlight after the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) arrested yet another l

Teguh Prasetyo – Indonesian exporters are projecting an increasingly bleak outlook for the coming months, with January-April orders likely to drop by as much as 30 percent, particularly

Anita Rachman – A decade after the country launched its decentralization drive, the promised prosperity for the regions has failed to materialize, one of the policy's key proponents sai

By Murray McLaughlin

Aditya Suharmoko, Jakarta – Indonesia has officially agreed US$5.5 billion of loans from Australia, Japan, the World Bank (WB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to help fill shortfal

Camelia Pasandaran & Markus Junianto Sihaloho – As preparations for next month's elections intensify, several legislative candidates admitted on Thursday that they were reaching too

Febriamy Hutapea – The Prosperous Justice Party, or PKS, stepped up its communication with other Islam-based parties on Thursday night with a discussion about a possible coalition in th

Jakarta – While some lawmakers have offered valid excuses for their absences from the last plenary session of the House of Representatives, most could not offer anything beyond laziness

Nurdin Hasan & Markus Junianto Sihaloho – Indonesian soldiers who pulled down the flags and banners of political parties in Aceh earlier this week had no authority to do so and migh

Camelia Pasandaran – The General Elections Commission continues to face new challenges in the distribution of ballot papers across the country and has been unable to increase the rate o

Jakarta – The International Labor Organization (ILO) launched a new project involving the National Teacher's Union (PGRI) and other workers' unions to fight child labor in Indonesia, in

Muninggar Sri Saraswati & Sally Piri – Two senior members of the fractured Golkar Party have announced their willingness to run for vice president on the ticket of incumbent Preside

Luh De Suriyani, Denpasar – Residents and members of Denpasar's artistic community have urged the city administration not to ban the ogoh-ogoh festival, held on the eve of Balinese Hind

Multa Fidrus, Tangerang – The global financial crisis has forced several large manufacturers in Banten to file a request with the provincial administration to pay workers less than the

Dicky Christanto, Jakarta – A crack is appearing within the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), with its top brass split over which presidential candidates to support.

Nivell Rayda – An anticorruption declaration signed last week by all of the political parties running in the legislative elections amounts to nothing without the action to support it, I

Undeterred by a series of court-issued setbacks for independent candidates and small parties, 23 political parties have established a group to fight a Constitutional Court ruling that u

Muninggar Sri Saraswati – In the past few weeks, the media has reported a spate of stories concerning candidates in the upcoming legislative elections being suspected of involvement in

Jakarta – In addition to declining exports, Indonesia's industry is under another threat of equally great significance – a continued drop in imports of key raw materials.

Lindsay Murdoch, Darwin – Authorities in Dili have charged 28 people, including Timorese-born Australian Angelita Pires, over last year's attacks on East Timor's top two political leade

Camelia Pasandaran – An advocate for the rights of migrant workers said on Tuesday that the lives of Indonesians working overseas had not significantly improved since the last elections

Jakarta – The House of Representatives has once again upheld its poor record for legislation performance, ending its 45-day sitting period on Tuesday with just three bills having been p

Muhamad Al Azhari – Emerging-market countries such as Indonesia are struggling for increasingly scarce liquidity in global financial markets as they compete with the US Treasury's plans

Febriamy Hutapea – The corruption-plagued House of Representatives was criticized on Tuesday after it concluded its third sitting session of the 2008-09 governmental year without enacti

Paul Toohey – Angelita Pires has been accused of being an indirect author of last year's shooting of East Timor President Jose Ramos Horta and has been charged with 19 counts of attempt

Adianto P.

Muninggar Sri Saraswati – If Vice President Jusuf Kalla was trying to make his stance on running for president clear during remarks to Golkar Party cadres over the weekend, he still man

Heru Andriyanto & Markus Junianto Sihaloho – Authorities have arrested 436 terror suspects since the country launched a major crackdown on terrorism in the wake of the October 2002

Rizal Sukma, Jakarta – Reading the warnings by TNI Chief Gen. Djoko Santoso last week reminded me of the days of the New Order rule.

Pandaya, Jakarta – It has been three months since the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) rocked the boat when it arrested Aulia Pohan, a former Bank Indonesia deputy governor who h

Anita Rachman – In the heart of Sumatra, amid the forests, farmlands and rural villages, a disturbing turf war is raging between humans and animals for dwindling space and natural resou

Irawaty Wardany, Jakarta – The government's plan to ban unregistered and contractual marriages and tighten procedures for polygamous ones sparked controversy Monday among the public.

Five Australians jailed in Indonesia over an ill-fated sightseeing adventure in West Papua have been released from prison while their lawyers prepare an appeal.

Aloysius Unditu and Arijit Ghosh – Indonesia's exports fell the most in more than 22 years in January and inflation slowed the following month, increasing scope for the central bank to

Harry Bhaskara, Jakarta – Dressed in his Golkar Party uniform and belting out political slogans to passing motorists, Indra Piliang knows all too well the stress of public campaigning i

Adianto P. Simamora, Jakarta – The open system to allocate legislative seats will not entirely shut out political parties from naming their representatives in legislatures.

Adianto P.

The United Nations Security Council has unanimously approved East Timor's request to keep its peace keeping force there for another year.

Jakarta – A government-sponsored bill on marriage could see unregistered and contractual marriages banned, while polygamous marriages could end in jail sentences and fines if conducted

Multa Fidrus, Tangerang – More than a thousand factory workers in Banten face an uncertain future after two manufacturing firms where they have been working for years made moves to seve

With candidates counting down the days to the April 9 legislative polls, merchants and street vendors in Greater Jakarta still lack information about who to vote for – and in some cases