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as salam alykom
Alright Diha, it is not that I m being curious, it is that I attended an election's campaign training and they referred to Indonesia as a similar case to Egypti.e Muslim majority country, long dectatorship regime, youth revlution. They said that economy grew tremendously and boosted whereas I met an Indonesia young woman working as maid here, she was explaining how poor they are and the level of poverty they are suffering.
I wanted to learn from someone like you about the real situation, if this level of poverty is prevailing, how come they claim an economic growth and boost??
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waalaikum salam sister.
First of all, I think it's better to tell you that Indonesia is different from Egypt, vice versa. Even sometimes we found similarities, but actually it's different.
Second, Indonesians are a little bit unique. They can tell you they don't have enough money, but at the same time they always keep up with the trend, such as fashion trend, gadget trend etc. You can say Indonesians are very consumptive, only few of them are not. This behaviour shapes up our society.
About poverty this is very complicated. If you listened to our government reports, yes, our economy is growing. They said 6% this year.
But when you look at the reality, you'll find many faces of poverty. Food prices are getting higher, many people don't have jobs, or have jobs but not enough to feed the family. Medical care, don't ask me, I even avoid to go to the doctors when I'm sick. (this is another interesting story). It's expensive and annoying. Education, it will clean up your pocket, very expensive.
The problem is that our goverment liberates all of the economic and social sectors. Especially this Mr. President Yudhoyono, he's very weak in leadership. He praises USA, even once he said "America is my second country," in one of his speeches.
Don't forget about the corruption. You'll get shocked.
Our president's weakness in leadership and our consumptive society, both create difficulties to our nation.
Egypt may take lesson form us about democracy, but don't take only the good thing.
After youth revolution in 1998 our leaders are more and more corruptive. Stupid (sorry I use this word, but it's correct) politicians are everywhere. Don't talk about "the right man on the right place". There's no such thing here.
That Indonesian maid you met, she/he would not go there just to be a maid if our country is prosperous. I don't know how much he/she earn there, but I'm sure it's more than average workers in Indonesia. Many of those maids have good houses in their villages, some piece of land, cows and goats, jewelries. They can live much better after working abroad as maids.
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Sobhan Allah Dija, although you said we are not similar, yet, according to your description we are much so. Residents of informal squatters here in Egypt either in urban or rural areas, are up to date in terms of mobile phones, sattelite dishes, computers..etc. Of course not all of them, but just to give you an idea, number of mobile phone users came to around 70+ million recenly and Egypt's population is 80 million, internet penetration is also very high. Also Egyptians are very consumptive, even those who live in poor areas, yet, they just copy what they watch on TV, if you know what I mean. If you follow Umra statistics, you would find Egyptians form a very good portion of the travellers. But Government's reports do not show any economic growth this year. Certainly, it did under the previous regime, we doubted those reports though.
And the she maid I m speaking about, says she is working to secure a house for herself and mother who is abandoned by the father.
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Assalamu'alaikum warahmatullah wa barakatuhu.
sorry for my disappearing :) I hope you're always in good condition, sis.
about the maid, sure everyone wants to have their own house. In the USA, they call it "american dream". I myself Alhamdullillah, now live in my own tiny house. I don't have a car, i don't have scooter like most of Indonesians. Scooter just like mobile phone here, it's part of lifestyle. and the good news is soon they have to face higher fuel price :)
How is Egypt? I follow the news. Islamists won the election, right?
Indonesians prefer to vote for liberalist or nationalist parties, not Islamist. Indonesians do not want to be called as secularist, but most of them very allergic to Islam, despite most of them are muslims. Very odd, huh?
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