2008 Sagang Award Winner Facing Critical Situation

Yogyakarta, MelayuOnline.com- Many people from various social backgrounds express their deep appreciation and support for all the programmes carried out by the Center for Research and Development of Malay Culture (BKPBM) in documenting, developing, and publishing the Malay culture. Balai Pinang Lima, the office building of BKPBM, is the silent witness of those appreciation and support that once came out from the Minister of Culture and Tourism of Republic of Indonesia, foreign countries‘ ambassadors to Indonesia, governors, regents, mayors, members of House of Representative, chairmen of tourism board, and several Malay prominent figures.

They state that such cultural activities are necessary to do. Even more, they also gave promises of supports in the form of‘real‘ cooperation with BKPBM. In fact, there is no, at least one, those promises that come to the reality. Consequently, BKPBM is now suffering from a big problem, whether such cultural activities be continued or not, because the shortage of funds to underpin its sustainability.

Since the first established in 2003, all the operational costs to run these works have spent more than a billion Rupiah that is allocated for building the office, hosting the websites, documenting, and publishing the contents within to the world.  Mahyudin Al Mudra, the founder of BKPBM and the director of MelayuOnline.com, has become so far the only financial provider for these.

”Balai Pinang Lima, of which the Yogyakarta people take a deep proud of it, is willy-nilly put for sale. I have no capability to fund these activities by myself anymore. If I have to do it, thus only due on December 2008, this research center will collapse. In case until the end of the year the ministers, governors, regents, mayors, and the members of House of Representative still do not actualize their promises, so I have to stop this,” Mahyudin‘s remarks on a meeting on Thursday (20/11/2008).

Further he admitted that he will be very sad to know BKPBM must be sold. ”If I must surrender and worse sell Balai Pinang Lima, I wish there will be any provincial government of ‘Malay-based‘ provinces who want to purchase it,” he added.

Lack of Government‘s Support

In a meeting attended by several crews of BKPBM, MelayuOnline.com, MalayTourism.com, and RajaAliHaji.com, the main cause for this critical situation is the lack of government‘s attention to cultural preservation as what BKPBM has done so far. It is clearly seen that the government allots only few percents of national income for cultural programmes. A mere political interest is still the most important reason for the government in creating public policy.

When international society has actively given supports to BKPBM, the Indonesian government seems not to pay any attention at all. That more than 10 millions people from the entire parts of the world – counted since January 20^th, 2007 – have actively accessed MelayuOnline.com and learned the Malay culture displayed within the web; only few who care about the continuation of BKPBM and its three cyber portals.

”It‘s desperate! When some members of Provincial House of Representative in certain province are going abroad using regional taxes for comparative study purposes, BKPBM and MelayuOnline.com that actively attempts to preserve the Malay culture have to stop because of lack of funds,” Mahyudin said.

Most of BKPBM‘s programmes such as researches, seminars, and book publishing must be stopped for a moment due to the fresh financial supports come in. Likewise, BKPBM is willy-nilly forced to make strategic plans to cope with the crisis; one of them is cutting the crews‘ salaries.

Furthermore he added that he will voluntarily relinquish the position as the head of BKPBM to everyone who declares that she/he would like to promise to ceaselessly underpin the Riau Vision 2020 and Riau Islands Vision as the centre of Malay cultural civilization in the Southeast Asian. In another occasion Mahyudin admitted that actually, he does not want to see BKPBM both completely and financially collapse; and never want to see Malay civilization be left to guard to Malaysia.

Ahmad Salehuddin (brt/11-08)

Irfan Nugroho (ter/80/11-08)

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