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Hasan Karman: No stranger to politics
On Dec
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n Dec. 17 last year, Hasan Karman and Edy R. Yacoub were sworn into office as Singkawang's Mayor and Deputy Mayor respectively in a ceremony officiated by West Kalimantan Deputy Governor Laurentius Herman Kadir.
Of the five candidate pairs, Hasan and Edy amassed 42 percent of the votes; no mean feat. More importantly, there was no doubt which team the majority of voters wanted.
Mayor Hasan Karman -- a lawyer, businessman and company executive -- is known to be a local boy and was born and bred in Singkawang. But who is Hasan Karman? What made him so attractive to the voters?
To begin with, he has a kind of mental flexibility that not every 45-year-old possesses.
He believes being a lawyer should bind him to the legal profession alone, demanding as it is.
And contrary to the widespread stereotype of ethnic Chinese, Hasan is not afraid of entering the political arena.
He is a chairman at the national council of Partai Perhimpunan Indonesia Baru (the New Indonesia Alliance Party). He is passionate about the topic of ethnic Chinese in the country and believes that Indonesian citizens of Chinese descent are an integral part of the nation. Not disconnected from it.
"My nationality is one hundred percent Indonesian. In terms of ethnicity I am Chinese, as others are Javanese or Mollucans, for instance. Take the ethnic Javanese who were born and live in Suriname. Their nationality is Suriname. If you ask them, they'll say they are Suriname of ethnic Javanese descent.
"I resent it when people question my sense of nationalism by associating it with my ethnicity. People are not born with a choice of ethnicity or locality," he said.
It is widely believed the first years of your life are the most formative and things you learn and absorb during that time will always be part of you. This is apparently true with Hasan. His emotional attachments to his birthplace, which is also where he spent the first 18 years of his life, are solid and lasting.
Take the most obvious item: food. Wherever Hasan goes, after a while he will crave traditional Singkawang dishes such as fried kuetiau noodles, meatball soup, and special fruit salad, or rujak.
Intimately related to food are his treasured memories of the times when he was growing up.
"In my childhood my family would gather together for the evening meal at about 5 o'clock. There were five children in my family, I was the youngest. We would shower first before coming to the table. We had a round dining table, where everybody, including our domestic helper, ate together.
"If there were any leftovers, they had to be reheated and stored in a ventilated cupboard made of wood, refrigerators being still beyond the financial reach of ordinary people. It was during these meals that my parents, especially my father, talked about life matters and instilled upon us children a sense of ethics," he said.
Hasan said he missed those moments because in today's circumstances, where everybody was so busy, family meals were becoming a thing of the past. He even finds it hard to demand that of his wife Emma and their three children.
When it comes to modern music, Hasan has an eclectic taste, or more a reflection of the different times of his life.
"In the late sixties and early seventies, I used to listen to my older brother's cassettes, among them Koes Plus, Mercy's Panbers and the Bee Gees.
"Now when I feel homesick, tunes such as Kembali ke Jakarta (Back to Jakarta), Ayah (Father), Don't forget to remember and Massachussets insinuate themselves into my head."
Hasan is cautiously optimistic about the country at present.
"We are in the middle of a learning curve toward democracy. A great deal of our hope lies in the willingness of the cognoscenti and the well-off middle class to pool their resources together in an endeavor to become agents of change, and take those at the grassroots with them to build a better society," he said.
"But we are also in the midst of multiple crises, and our society is not quite conditioned to assimilate social and cultural changes quickly. Yet if we don't move fast we'll be left behind by our neighbors whose human resources are much better than ours."
Hasan is concerned that Indonesia is not ready to get on board the ASEAN Free Trade Area, while others in the region generally are. However, he has not given up hope.
"Two or three decades ago, the world was pessimistic about China, yet within a short time China came up with amazing advances and achievements. I am convinced we can do that too," he said.
And as its newly elected Mayor, Hasan is now concentrating on Singkawang.
"I have a fairly sober and realistic ambition here. Singkawang still lacks general infrastructure, resulting in insufficient education and employment opportunities, and insufficient health and general welfare services.
"With my partner the deputy mayor hopefully we'll be able to start with facilities such as a good airport, a good port, clean and drinkable water, reliable electricity and build on from there."
Once he has carried out his mayoral tasks successfully, he hopes to turn to teaching and become a university lecturer.
