AJI/AT, Jakarta – The commemoration of international labour day (May Day) in Jakarta today involved thousands of workers and other social organisations such as students, the urban poor, farmers and women.

The participants had been commemorating May Day since 10.30am by holding a people’s theater at the Hotel Indonesia roundabout in Central Jakarta and then marching to the State Palace.

This May Day the teams raised were national industrialisation for the people as an alternative economic concept to resolve welfare problems that have yet to be solved by the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Vice-president Jusuf Kalla.

National industrialisation is industrialisation that gets rid of the neoliberal framework and must be carried put by a clean, democratic, modern, independent and populist government. The Yudhoyono administration has no commitment to implement industrialisation that is truly free from the interests of neoliberalism.

Action commemorating labour day, May 1, were also held in the satellite city of Tangerang (Cisadane/KBC Worker Committee), in Jakarta (Indonesian Transportation Trade Union for Struggle, SBTPI) and dominated by opposition to illegal payments at the North Jakarta port of Tanjung Priok and in the satellite city of Bekasi in front of the Indomobil car factory followed by a march to Bekasi’s Tongyang industrial zone.

[Translated by James Balowski.]