Minister of Communication and Information Technology
Of The Republic of Indonesia
On The Opening of ASEAN Blogger Gathering
Bali, 15 November 2011
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.
Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen, Let me first express my felicitations to all of you the participants of this special occasion, enabling the ASEAN Blogger Community Chapter Indonesia, which was inaugurated by the Director General of ASEAN Cooperation on May 2011 and others from ASEAN, to gather here during the ASEAN Summit 2011. I am privileged to address this distinguished gathering.
Ladies and gentlemen. We Indonesians are great users of ICT for multi purposes of communication. That is why we are involved in all telecommunication meetings —at the national and international levels.
At the national level, we develop a strategy of empowering the public by endorsing them to use internet for positive purposes without diminishing the principle of democracy at all. We even facilitate the public to compete each other to obtain the ICT Award whose purpose is among other things to appreciate anybody or any institution successful of creating and innovating ICT products and technologies through INAICTA.
At the community level, the government and civil society organizations are creating the various activities working together in increasing public participations of enabling better communications and facilitating constructive debates such as through twitter, facebook, blog and other social medias. The communication not only conducts dialogue among various people and groups, it also actively promotes business interaction through social. For me myself, I am fortunately one of the quite active twitter users, in which I have got lots of benefits of communicating my ideas as well as getting critics and suggestion from my followers.
We are now looking into ways of utilizing Information and Communication Technology to intensify and enlarge the cultural dialogues that we wish to get them in harmony. Therefore I ask ASEAN Blogger Community to be more active in promoting ASEAN activities for dissemination of information and messages of ASEAN to the world. ASEAN is in the verge of crucial challenges that this sub-regional cooperative organization cannot survive in the globalization era without strong support from its people. Therefore, the ASEAN Blogger Community has mandated all ASEAN member-countries to do their utmost to make ASEAN relevant, useful, and felt among its people.
Ladies and gentlemen, We feel that all these efforts that we have undertaken with our partners in the promotion of dialogue have contributed to peace and harmony in the world, and especially in our beloved region ASEAN. Thank you.
Wassalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.
Minister of Communication and Information Technology,
TifatulSembiring
