Villages In Indonesia Reach 80 Thousand, Coordinating Minister For Human Development And Culture Encourages Villagers To Candidate For Leaders

JAKARTA - Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture (Menko PMK) Muhadjir Effendy conveyed a sense of solidarity, shared fate and shared responsibility for the common interest, one of the practical manifestations of democracy.

"Despite the fact that democracy is not a new thing for Indonesia, it is not only our sub-culture that contains elements of democracy, thus forming local wisdom that we recognize a lot today," said Muhadjir Effendy at the Indonesian Civil Society Forum 2022 (ICSF 2022). ) which was held virtually, Wednesday 30 March.

He said Indonesia has hundreds of cultures, tens of thousands of islands and thousands of languages spread throughout Indonesia and has unique traditions and a distinctive political system.

"Today we are trying to continue to collect and collect noble values that have a democratic character from various sub-cultures spread throughout Indonesia," said the Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture.

Indonesia, he continued, is a country that is still relatively young in terms of time in implementing a democratic system.

“Democracy has grown intensely since the 1998 reform era and continues to grow to create an inclusive democracy and accommodate the needs of all Indonesian people. Even though there are many obstacles and challenges, we are optimistic about a brighter future for the Indonesian people," said Muhadjir.

In this modern era, he continued, Indonesia has established a democratic form of government system to accommodate the participation of all elements of society.

"In an effort to uphold justice and inclusiveness, our electoral system opens up opportunities for people to vote from the lowest level, namely the village to the higher levels of mayor, regent, governor and at its peak the presidential election," he said.

Even they, continued Muhadjir, can nominate themselves, while not all the world's population has the same opportunity.

"Even after a leader is elected, the community is still given the opportunity to be given a role in development to help determine the priority policy directions," he said.

At the smallest government level, for example in the village, continued Muhadjir, a village development community is considered incomplete if it does not include representatives from women, the poor, traditional representatives to representatives from people with special needs or with disabilities.

"This is part of a regulation that is applied to all villages in Indonesia, where the number of villages throughout Indonesia has almost reached 80 thousand villages," he said.