Calm Down Please

I don't like to see the recurring hatred of Indonesians towards Malaysians. I fully understand Malaysia is not a good boy. Several times it offends us as the last incident of detaining the Indonesian government officers who caught the Malaysian fishermen breaching Indonesian territory. And their response is always that the conflict is a trivial matter and the anger emerged only represents a few Indonesians.

However, the Indonesian protesters have done too much and disproportionate. Hurling faces to the Malaysian embassy, threatening the Malaysian travelers in Indonesia is primitive and childish actions.

Indonesians should realize that 2 million migrant workers creating incomes from Malaysia. Thanks to their prosperity so that Malaysians are absorbed in more added value jobs, whereas the lower jobs go to Indonesian jobless.

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Indonesia has to stop exacerbating this conflict. It is not only useless but wasting our energy to develop our country as well.

Even the lawmakers have lost their common sense by stating the military option addresing this "sibling rivalry". It is nonsense. We are not ready to wage war both technically and economically reasoning. Can our old and out-of-date plane go to war despite they often crashed without being shot by any enemy's bullet? Do we have budget to the military campaign whereas we need that money to develop our infrastructure, school, and people's heath?

Absolutely unexpected war between Malaysia and Indonesia will make suffer of both countries, particularly of Indonesian people. Without war, Indonesian people have been bombed by mismanaged-3 kg-LPG-canister explosion, now they want us to have other bombs from Malaysian army. What a miserable life will be!

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Frankly speaking, are we, Indonesians, jealous with Malaysians so we hate them so much?

Their income per capita is 3 times more than us (The World Factbook, GDP per capita Indonesia: USD 4.000, Malaysia: 14.900). The tourists come to Malaysia is 3 times more than to Indonesia (Wikipedia, World Tourism Rankings: Malaysia 23.6 million visitors in 2009, Indonesian Ministry of Tourism: 6.4 million visitors in 2009) . Petronas outdoes Pertamina in all business measurements (Forbes: in 2008 Petronas' asset: USD 125 million, Pertamina USD 25 million; Petronas: Twin Tower, Formula One Racing sponsor, Pertamina: ???). Although Indonesia is the world's biggest CPO producers, but Malaysia has more benefit from the CPO downstream products than us. Now Malaysia focuses on escaping middle income trap, while Indonesia still grapples with corruption, bad infrastructure and poverty. Malaysia is ready for bright future with new strategy of New Economic Model (NEM) replacing New Economic Policy (NEP) to achieve status of developed country through innovation, while Indonesia development direction will rely on who take the helm in every presidential election.

Indonesia should prioritize its economic development first. Indonesia should catch up the Malaysia's economic progress. Indonesia should compete Malaysia in terms of economy the way Koreans try to revenge humiliation of Japan in the past.

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