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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adianto P.

Max Lane – Elections for the two houses of Indonesia's national parliament and the provincial parliaments will take place on April 9, at a time of growing dissatisfaction with the parli

[The following article was written in response to an article by Kelik Ismunanto, a leader of Papernas (National Liberation Unity Party) titled "Indonesia: Tracing a path towards parliam

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

Jon Lamb – East Timor has passed through the first year of "stability" since the failed assassination attempts in February 2008 on East Timorese President Jose Ramos Horta and Prime Min

Jakarta – The Regional Representatives Council (DPD) members are pushing for a constitutional amendment which would formalize press freedom as a pillar of democracy.

Indonesian villagers have trapped and killed their fourth endangered Sumatran tiger amid a flurry of tiger attacks blamed on illegal logging, the environmental group World Wildlife Fund

Panca Nugraha, Mataram – After living in uncertainty at a refugee center in West Nusa Tenggara for three years, 68 members of the Ahmadiyah Islamic sect have decided to risk returning h

Jakarta – Most voters still prefer parties over candidates, despite a Constitutional Court ruling that means parties will have little say in who gets a legislative seat, a survey said F

Adianto P.

Erwida Maulia, Jakarta – The government has been slammed for issuing a regulation-in-lieu-of-law to allow double marking on ballots and to update the permanent voter list.

Jakarta – The special committee for missing persons at the House of Representatives has said the government is "not serious" about resolving human rights abuse cases after top governmen

Erwida Maulia, Jakarta – The National Commission on Human Rights says the displacement of thousands of mudflow victims from their homes in the East Java town of Sidoarjo could be classi

Jakarta – Reforms within the Indonesian Military (TNI) have remained slow under the administration of retired Army general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a discussion concluded Thursday.

ID Nugroho, Surabaya – Hundreds of workers grouped under a number of different organizations staged a rally Wednesday to demand the East Java High Court respect their right to form work

The rupiah has weakened again for the seventh straight week, prompting the government to search for new ways to stabilize the volatile currency.

Dicky Christanto, Jakarta – The Attorney General's Office (AGO) has bowed to public pressure by removing two graft-tainted officials from their new posts as corruption investigation sup

Nivell Rayda – The State Intelligence Agency, or BIN, assured the House of Representatives on Wednesday that there were no known threats that could disrupt the April 9 legislative elect

Febriamy Hutapea – With several ministers and other senior officials once again declining to attend a House hearing concerning military abductions of students in the late 1990s, lawmake

Aditya Suharmoko, Jakarta – Legislators approved late on Tuesday a provision in the 2009 state budget that enables the government to unleash its much-needed stimulus package, and even i

Jakarta – Minister of Administrative Reforms Taufik Effendy said Tuesday that the first ever accountability evaluation report for state agencies confirmed the bureaucracy was more inte

Angus Grigg – It was a performance to remember, an act of sheer front.

Jakarta – Indonesia has appointed two prosecutors, whom activists allege to be corrupt, to oversee graft investigations as part of its crackdown on corruption, an anti-graft group said