Indonesia
This report will be on the History in Brief
of Indonesia, the Government of
Indonesia, the island of Java, and the
Geography of Indonesia. In early days,
the region from India to Japan,
including Indonesia, was known to the Europeans
as the Indies. Chris Columbus
was looking for a westward sea root from Europe to
the Indies, when he
arrived in America. During 1600s the Dutch political control
began to spread
Indonesia. Indonesia declared it's independence in 1945 and
fought the Dutch
until 1949, when they gave up their control. At first, the
Dutch allowed
nationalist movement to develop. In 1905, it had introduced
councils to
govern the towns and cities. By 1920, there were 32 such councils,
with
little electoral franchise. Other councils were also established.
They
included provincial councils in Java, and group communities councils
outside
Java. The current government of Indonesia is based on a
constitution written in
1945. A president serves as the head of
government. The president appoints a
sheet of advisers consisting of top
military leaders and civilians. In theory,
the assembly is supposed to
establish a general direction of the government's
policies. A house of
peoples Representatives is the nation's parliament,
however, in practice
neither the assembly nor the house has real power. Instead,
it is the
president who makes all of the important decisions. The president is
elected
to a five-year term the Peoples Consultative assembly. The assembly
has
1,000 members. It includes the 500 members of the people's
representatives. It
also includes 500 members of regional, occupational, and
other groups. All
assembly members serve five-year terms. The assembly
usually is only held once
every five years. The 500 members of the People's
Representatives includes 400
who are elected through a system that insures
that the government's political
organization win most of the seats.
Serviceman have no vote, so the remaining
100 are appointed by the
president on the recommendation of the commander of the
armed forces.
Indonesia is divided into twenty-seven provinces. The provinces
are divided
into regencies and municipalities. These units are further divided
into
villages. Officials of all local government units except villages
are
appointed by central government from lists of people nominated by
regional
legislators. Indonesian villages elect their own village officials
to provide
local government. Java lies between Sumatra (to the west), and
Bali (to the
east). To the north is the Java Sea. To the south is the Indian
Ocean, which
Indonesians call the Indonesian Ocean. The greatest distance
from North Java to
South Java is two hundred kilometers. From East Java
to West Java is over one
thousand kilometers. The island of Java has five
administrative units: the
special territory of Jakarta Raya, Java Barat ,
Jawa Barat, Jawa Tengah, the
special territory of Yogjakarta, and Jawa Timur.
Chains of volcanic mountains
run along the island from west to east. These
mountains are apart of a fold in
the earth's crust which extends from
Southeast Asian mainland through Sumatra
and Java to the lesser Sundra
Islands. Java itself has 112 peaks. The volcanic
soil is extremely fertile
and this are supports a large population. Tangkuban
Prahu in West Java is
a live volcanoe that attracts many tourists. A similar
mountain in the Sunda
Straights, Krakatoua, is famous for its eruption in 1883.
The whole
northern portion of the peak was blown away. The explosion was heard
over 700
kilometers away. The resulting sea waves caused over thirty six
thousand
Indonesian deaths in the low lying of West and South Jakarta. Indonesia
is a
country in Southeast Asia that consists of more than 13,600 islands.
The
islands lie along the equator, and extend more than 5,000 kilometers.
Many of
the islands cover only a few square kilometers but about half of New
Guinea (an
area called Irian Jaya), and three fourths of Borneo (Kalimantan),
also belong
to Indonesia. New Guinea and Borneo are the second and third
largest islands in
the world after Greenland.