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Jakarta Post

Sumitro Center launched in Washington

The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC, has launched a program to foster relations between Indonesia, the US and other Southeast Asian countries

Yenni Djahidin (The Jakarta Post)
Washington, DC
Fri, October 12, 2012

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Sumitro Center launched in Washington

T

he Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC, has launched a program to foster relations between Indonesia, the US and other Southeast Asian countries.

“This is very important for us to be able to launch the Sumitro Djojohadikusumo Center for Emerging Economies in Southeast Asia,” CSIS president John Hamre said at a reception in Washington on Monday.

Hamre said that Southeast Asia lacked the prominence in the US public that the region, with its growing democracies economic power, deserved. “It’s all there, and yet there’s no consciousness in Washington.”

Hamre added that Washington could no longer overlook Southeast Asia and that he was grateful that Indonesian businessman Hashim Djojohadisumo, the brother of Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) politician Lt. Gen. (ret.) Prabowo Subianto, funded the center through the Arsari Djojohadikusumo Foundation.

Hashim said that the center would be very useful for the nations of Southeast Asia and the US.

“The CSIS is very important because it is a non-partisan think tank. We don’t want to be accused of favoring one party over the other,” he said when asked about choosing CSIS rather than the Republican-leaning Heritage Foundation or the Democratic-leaning Brookings Institution.

On naming the center for his father, Hashim said, “My father was very active in Washington. He was a friend of the US and also a friend of ASEAN countries.”

Sumitro Djojohadikusumo was a prominent Indonesian economist, and is seen as the architect of Indonesia’s post-Independence economy. He spent years of study in the US and was also a brilliant diplomat and finance minister. He died in Jakarta on March 9, 2001.

The center’s director, Ernest Bower, a senior adviser and director of the Southeast Asia Program and Pacific Partners Initiative at the CSIS, said that there was massive funding to study China, Japan and India, while there was almost no money for the study of Southeast Asia.

“Our plan is to bring in support from leading Indonesian and Southeast Asian foundations and families, and also American donors, and build an endowment for a long-term, enduring focus on Southeast Asia at the policy level in Washington, DC,” Bowertold the Jakarta Post.

The Sumitro center is not the only think tank focusing on Southeast Asia. Singaporean journalist and businessman Derwin Pereira also funds a program to promote US-Indonesia understanding, while Golkar chairman Aburizal Bakrie, through the Bakrie Group, funds a Southeast Asian studies center at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

 

 

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