Indonesian youths are nationalistic, a survey conducted by Genta Pemuda Indonesia Foundation says.

The survey measured youths' nationalism by assessing their stance on the concept of a liberal state, their willingness to protect the state's assets and prioritize the nation's interests.

The foundation surveyed 421 respondents, most of whom were involved in youth organizations registered in the Sports and Youth Ministry, from October to December in 33 provinces.

"They have a high spirit of nationalism despite their disappointment with the government's performance," foundation researcher Arif Mustofa said Thursday as quoted by tempo.com.

Most of respondents rejected the concept of a liberal state, with 30.2 percent of respondents strongly disagreeing that Indonesia become a liberal state and 38 percent disagreeing. Only 8.6 percent of respondents cited that they supported a liberal Indonesia. "This has shown that they still uphold the Republic of Indonesia," Arif said.

Up to 62.5 percent of respondents pointed out that Indonesia should limit foreign investment and 17.3 percent said foreign investment were neoliberalist in nature. As many as 16.4 percent of respondents said that they were open to foreign investment provided there was fair profit-sharing. Only 3.8 percent of respondents said that foreign investment could boost the Indonesian economy.

However, most of the respondents said that they were disappointed with the government's performance as 93.6 percent of the youths surveyed said that the government had shown little effort in dealing with inter-faith conflicts.

More than half of the respondents also said that the government had failed to fulfill citizen's basic needs, while 40.3 percent said that the current situation was no different from the situation under the New Order regime. (swd)