OPENING REMARKS AT THE OPENING CEREMONY 42ND SEAMEO COUNCIL CONFERENCE

OPENING REMARKS

H.E. DR. SUSILO BAMBANG YUDHOYONO
PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA

AT THE OPENING CEREMONY

42ND SEAMEO COUNCIL CONFERENCE






ACCESS, QUALITY, GLOBALIZATION, COMPETITIVENESS; MDGS, POVERTY, CONFLICTS, TOLERANCE, CLIMATE CHANGE


BALI, 14 MARCH 2007

Bismillah Hirrahmanirrahim
Ass Wr Wb

Ministers,
Excellencies,
Delegates,
Dear friends,
This morning, I have the pleasant task of welcoming you, on behalf of the Government and people of Indonesia, to Bali, Indonesia.

Just in case you have not heard, Bali has been voted “the best island in the world”, four times in a row, by Travel and Leisure Magazine; and also voted the number one “favourite holiday destination” by Time Magazine last year.
Indeed, the Balinese are a very unique and special people : they are deeply spiritual, blessed with a rich culture, and very resilient. And the more Bali “goes international”, the stronger the Balinese cling to their heritage.

As we ponder on the question of how to better promote cooperation in the areas culture, science and education, perhaps you will find some inspiration here in Bali, where there is a healthy symbiosis between tradition and modernity, between the past and the future, between east and west, and between Hindu and Islam.

It is a great honor for Indonesia to host the 42nd Council Conference of the South-East Asian Ministers of Education Organisation. This Conference is being held back-to-back with the the Second ASEAN Ministers of Education meeting, which will convene tomorrow in Ubud. And so I take this opportunity to wish both Conferences all the best in your deliberations.
I am also pleased to welcome our newest associate member from the Kingdom of Spain. May I ask the Head of the Spanish delegate to rise so we can recognize you. Welcome, sir. Thank you for joining us, you are among friends.

I know I speak for all of us in paying tribute commending Singapore’s Minister of Education of Singapore, Mr. Tharman Shanmugaratnam, for his effective leadership as President of the SEAMEO Council. And I congratulate Minister Bambang Sudibyo who will succeed Minister Tharman at the head of the SEAMEO Council. Lets give them both our appreciation.

Ladies and gentlemen,
This Conference has come along way since it was established in 1965, 2 years before the founding of ASEAN in Bangkok.
In fact, when SEAMEO first convened, Southeast Asia was a very different place. The region was divided by a chilling Cold War, pulled in different directions. Inter-state wars, conflicts and geopolitical rivalries were rife, and poverty was rampant. The world was also very different then : the Berlin Wall still stood tall, there was no internet, and the term “globalization” was not even coined yet.

Today, Southeast Asia has been fundamentally transformed. The Cold War has long gone. Peace prevailed in Vietnam, and in Cambodia. All of Southeast Asia have become part of ASEAN—also known as the ASEAN 10. No country in Southeast Asia is at war with another, or with an outside power. A free trade area has been created in Southeast Asia. And ASEAN countries have resolved to work together to become an “ASEAN Community” by 2020, a target recently accelerated to 2015.

All this did not come about effortlessly. It took a great deal of statesmanship, political will, diplomacy, conflict resolution, hard work, and creative adaptation.
If you asked me what would be among the most important developments in Southeast Asia in recent decades, I would say that it is the growing inter-linkages between countries, and especially between the peoples, of Southeast Asia.
Trade between Southeast Asia countries now totals about US$ 305 billion, or 25 % of total ASEAN trade. This is much higher than in the 1993 when intra-ASEAN trade was 19% of total ASEAN trade.

Investments between ASEAN countries now reach US$ 2,4 billion, or 9.5% of total investments in ASEAN.
And more and more Southeast Asians are travelling within the region. The number of ASEAN visitors traveling within ASEAN now totals about 23 million last year, compared to only 11 million a decade ago.

Thus, overall, there is a steady growth in the pattern of trade, investments, tourism, transportation, people to people contacts. It is this trend of growing networks and inter-linkages that will change Southeast into a coherent geopolitical and geoeconomic area, and the vision of an ASEAN Community will become a reality.

A MORE ACTIVE SEAMEO :
There is much that SEAMEO can do to help foster this healthy regional transformation, because SEAMEO has the right ingredients and network to do so.
Over the last 4 decades, SEAMEO has grown significantly.
When SEAMEO first convened in Bangkok in 1965, it was attended by 5 Southeast Asian countries. Today, SEAMEO includes all of Southeast Asia, including Timor Leste. And it has been joined by associate member states from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Spain, and an affiliate member in the International Council for Open and Distance Education.

Throughout its existence, SEAMEO has produced very active programs in developing human resources for education, science and culture throughout our region. It has also developed an elaborate mechanism of cooperation. And it has committed itself to a vision of becoming a ”dynamic, self-reliant,
strategic, policy driven and internationally recognized regional organization” to promote education, science, and culture.


Perhaps the founders of SEAMEO knew something we know very well today : that the best way for nations to engage one another is through soft power, and the diffusion of soft power ultimately leads to greater peace and stability.

We will continue to count on the role of SEAMEO as a vehicle to promote regional and inter-regional cooperation for education, science and culture.

The potentials and opportunities that lie await are enormous.

One of these great opportunities is how we can utilize and integrate information and communication technology (ICT) in our education system.

I believe that the singlemost important development in education has been the e xplosive development in information and communication technology.

In the late 1980’s, the internet and ema il was used only by a handful of people in Universities in the west. Today, there are over 1,1 billion ema il users around the world, while the number of web pages is estimated at about 30 billion.

And with the emergence of cheap laptops, PDAs, Wifis, free emails, low cost cellular line, we are faced with huge opportunities that can fundamentally change our educational system and social landscape.
In the old days, the only way for a gifted student from a remote island in Indonesia to get access to modern knowledge and information in Europe or America was to compete for a scholarship and cross 2 oceans for several months. Today, a school girl in Sumatra or Mindanao or Phuket need only to click the mouse and she will have instant access to an endless sea of information on any given subject in this world. And that the same information is available regardless of whether you are rich or poor, Asian or European, young and old. It is simply one of the most revolutionizing phenomena to human civilization.

The sad reality, however, is that ICT remains under-utilized in many countries, including in the field of education. We need to figure out how to harness the tremendous potentials of ICT to connect teachers and students, how to use it as an effective teaching tool, how to use it to unleash creative potentials of students, and how to make the present and future generation as natural to the digital world as my generation was to pencil and paper.

When Indonesia gained independence in 1945, a major challenge to our founding fathers was illiteracy, which was over 90 %. Today, our rate of literacy is well over 90 %, but, like many developing countries, the problem has now moved on from literacy to digital literacy.

Ensuring digital literacy for present and future generations will be a key factor in preparing our citizens for a globalized world. I therefore appreciate the special attention given by this Conference to the issue of Integrating ICT for Better Quality and Values of Education.

I also hope that SEAMEO continues to actively promote the centers of excellence throughout the region.
To date, 15 SEAMEO Regional Centers on a variety of topics have been established : in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam.

I hope more of these Centers will be established so that one day each country in Southeast Asia will host a SEAMEO Center. I cannot stress enough the importance of spreading a culture of excellence among our peoples. We are certainly not lacking in talents, because the wonderful thing about the human mind is that it is always full of surprises.

My favourite story is about a poor student from remote Papua. His name is Septinus George Saa, known for his nickname ”Oge”. Oge was born into a poor family, but he loved learning, and he was intellectually curious about everything. In 2004, at age 17, Oge sent a scientific paper titled ”Infinite triangle and Hexagonal lattice networks of identical resistor” (yes, it sounds very complicated !) to a scientific competition in Poland. The team of jury who examined the paper by blown away the ”the creativity, intelligence and clarity” of Oge’s analysis, and subsequently announced Oge as the winner of the ”First step to Noble Prize in Physics”.

There are millions of Oge’s in Southeast Asia waiting to be found. Like Oge, they are not asking for money : what they want is opportunity, access, guidance. We should do all we can to support them and help them reach their dreams.
Which brings to my next point : I hope SEAMEO will help promote the growth of Research and Development activities in Southeast Asia. According to the World Economic Forum, in the overall, with the exception of Singapore, our region is still lagging behind Europe, the US, and East Asia in terms of R and D, and this is true for the public and private sector as well as among University circles.

This should not be the case considering the pool of talents in our region. Our ability to stimulate R and D will have a direct impact on the state of our competitiveness.
And as SEAMEO becomes the regional knowledge resource, I hope SEAMEO Centers can be a marketplace of ideas for Southeast Asians and other countries. With its expanding networks and intellectual resources, SEAMEO can very well be at the forefront of new innovations involving Southeast Asian academia and their counter-parts.

I also welcome the close cooperation that is being worked out between SEAMEO ASEAN in promoting education. I trust that tomorrow, at the Second ASEAN Education Ministers Meeting in Ubud, the ASEAN Ministers will take-up this issue of how to achieve greater collaboration with SEAMEO which would draw on existing expertise of the SEAMEO Centers.
For our part, Indonesia is fully committed to support the work of SEAMEO.

Education is a top national priority for us. Our Ministry of National Education serves more than 50 million students in 300 thousand schools with around 3 million teachers, spread out in communities in over 17 thousand islands
This year, we are spending about 44 trillion Rupiah for education, which is about 11,6 % of the national budget. The World Bank has called our teachers re-education program ” the leading or the largest education reform program in the world”.
We aim to achieve the MDG target of universal enrollment for 9 years of compulsory study by 2009.

Ladies and gentlemen,
As you proceed with your deliberations, I trust that you never loose sight of the strategic importance of your work here. Education strikes into the heart of every part of our national well-being.
In areas of poverty, education brings empowerment and opportunity.
In conflict areas, education helps to heal the wounds and bring about reconciliation.
In the fight against terrorism, education helps to erase extremism.
In places of ignorance and bigotry, education can set the light of tolerance and knowledge.
In the scheme of nation-building, education brings civic duty and healthy nationalism.
And in relations between nations and in our efforts to evolve community, educations brings bridges of friendship and understanding.

You are therefore embarking on a very important task. I wish you all a productive discussion and memorable stay in this beautiful Island of the Gods.
Finally, by saying Bismillahirahmanirahiim, I officially declare the 42nd Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Council Conference open.


Jakarta, March 2007

PRESIDEN REPUBLIK INDONESIA,

DR. H. SUSILO BAMBANG YUDHOYONO