INDONESIA REQUIRES AID FROM N.Z.

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30602, 19 November 1964, Page 18

INDONESIA REQUIRES AID FROM N.Z.

New Zealand must help Indonesia, said Mrs M. Money in a talk to a sixth-formers’ Asian studies seminar yesterday. The projects with the most hope of success were those that filled some immediate need.

Mrs Money and her husband lived in Java for two years—--1962-63 —when Mr Money was a Colombo Plan lecturer in English in the city of Malang, 600 miles east of Djakarta. Mrs Money said the most successful project she saw was a visit by a team of Hungarian surgeons. Both Hungary and Indonesia were short of anaesthetists, and the Hungarians taught the Indonesians to conduct major surgery under local anaesthetics. “Removing half a lung under local anaesthetic may seem a desperate measure,” said Mrs Money, “but these people are in desperate condition when they get treatment.”

Mrs Money told the students that one of the greatest difficulties facing the Government of the Republic was to impose its new, democratic system, on an ancient social structure quite opposed to it historically. “One of the greatest problems in Indonesia,” she said, “is going to be to drive home the idea that manual work is important and that the workers are the new aristocracy.” Nationalism She said it was a tremendous task to attempt to make a unified nation, accepting rule from Djakarta, of the people of 3000 islands with; their 15 different racial groups, each with its own culture and language. Many of Indonesia’s problems today came from the attempt to rule the country from Djakarta and the lack of a civil service able to do it

“They stuck together to kick out the Dutch,” said Mrs

Money. “One of their problems now is to keep the people together. This is one of the reasons for the cult that surrounds President Sukarno.”

Mrs Money said the frequent flag-raising and indoctrination ceremonies emphasised the tremendous insistence on the national identity of Indonesia.