Poltics of ASEAN Nations : News , Updates & Discussions.

[Azaad]

Resident polymath is back . This time with an analysis of the Indonesian Presidential elections & its likely winner. Pls take his assertions of Indonesia being a relatively tolerant Islamic nation with a fistful of salt instead of a pinch as they're engaged in putting down a rebellion in Eastern Papua or Irian Jaya ( populated mostly by Christians & animists into which the authorities in Djakarta have been inserting Sumatrans & Javans with a view to tilt the demographics there in their favour ) since the 1970s till date of which there's close to zero mention in the international press .

Add to that the repression they let loose on East Timor of which the prospective winner of the current presidential elections was the architect whose entry into many western nations was banned much like Modi's .

Then there's the small matter of their history wherein a communist sponsored revolution inspired & egged on by the Chinese in the early to mid 1960s which was brutally put down by the Army of whom some of primary participants in the coup were Indonesians of Chinese origins who in turn paid a rather heavy price.

But you won't get all that from garden variety polymath for he's already decided the lens he'd wear to view Indonesia.