Rachmawati Soekarnoputri, daughter of Indonesia’s first president Soekarno, said that she plans to give the Soekarno Award to President of North Korea Kim Jong Un after recently meeting with North Korea’s ambassador to Indonesia Ri Jong Ryul.
The notion that Kim Jong Un is a dictator, according to Rachmawati, has come about from Western countries.
“That’s all just western propaganda,” Rachmawati said when the award was confirmed by Kompas.com on Friday.
She sees similarities between the reign of the North Korean supreme leader with that of her father’s reign during Indonesia’s post-independence era. According to her, western countries also considered Soekarno to be a dictator.
“It’s common [to be branded a dictator]. To stand on one’s principles in reaching a goal, many consider this the behavior of a dictator,” said founder and chief of the Soekarno Education Foundation.
Rachmawati thinks of Kim Jong Un as a person who is consistent in living out the idealism built by Kim Il Sung, his grandfather who was also the founder of North Korea.
As such, Rachmawati sees Kim Jong Un as having similar a vision to that of her father Soekarno, who was opposed to neo-colonialist imperialism (Nekolim).
The Foundation had previously handed the same award posthumously to Kim Il Sung in 2001 for his role in peacemaking and independence.
The Jakarta Post
