YOGYAKARTA: The four-day state visit of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Al-Sultan Abdullah Ri’ayatuddin Al-Mustafa Billah Shah, and the Raja Permaisuri Agong, Tunku Hajah Azizah Aminah Maimunah Iskandariah, to Indonesia, which concluded today, has helped to strengthen bilateral ties.
Malaysia and Indonesia are committed to enhancing their relations and cooperation established over the past 62 years to a more comprehensive level.
Comptroller of the Royal Household for Istana Negara, Datuk Ahmad Fadil Shamsuddin, said that during the visit, Sultan Abdullah and Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who is popularly known as Jokowi, held discussions on various matters including collaboration between the oil and gas companies of the two countries, Petronas of Malaysia and Pertamina of Indonesia.
The discussions also touched on the promotion of palm oil as well as the arrest of fishermen of the two countries alleged to have intruded in the waters of either country, he said.
“His Majesty expressed satisfaction with his visit and conveyed his appreciation to President Jokowi and extended congratulations in conjunction with Indonesia’s National Day on Aug 17 as well as for President Jokowi’s victory in the presidential elections on April 17,” he told Malaysian journalists covering the King’s state visit to Indonesia.
Sultan Abdullah, Tunku Azizah and their entourage returned to Malaysia Thursday after the visit to Jakarta and Yogyakarta.
At their talks at the Bogor Presidential Palace, Jokowi also informed Sultan Abdullah of the plan to move Indonesia’s administrative capital from Jakarta to East Kalimantan. Sultan Abdullah also planted a damar sapling in the compound of the palace.
The state visit to Indonesia was the second visit abroad by Sultan Abdullah after he was installed as the 16th Yang di-Pertuan Agong on July 30. The first state visit was to Brunei Darussalam.
In Jakarta, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong visited Masjid Istiqlal, the largest mosque in Southeast Asia, which can accommodate more than 200,000 people.
Tunku Azizah, who had a separate programme, visited several places including the World Ikat Textiles 2019 - Ikat: Ties That Bind exhibition at the Jakarta Textile Museum which has almost 100 collections of woven cloth from various countries including Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand.
She said the ties among the Asean countries are like the thread used to make songket, symbolic of the unity of the nations in the region.
On their visit to Yogyakarta, Their Majesties had an audience with the Sultan of Yogyakarta, Sri Sultan Hamengkubuwono X, who is also the Governor of the Yogyakarta Special Region.
Sultan Abdullah’s visit to the Keraton Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat or the Royal Palace of Yogyakarta (known as Kraton Jogja) had a special significance as his father, the late Paduka Ayahanda Sultan Ahmad Shah, had visited it in 1981 when he was the seventh Yang di-Pertuan Agong.
The closeness between Sultan Abdullah and Sri Sultan Hamengkubuwono X reflects the good ties that strengthen the institution of the Islamic Sultanate in the region.
Sultan Abdullah and Tunku Azizah also visited the Borobudur Temple, a World Heritage Site, demonstrating their love for culture, aesthetic values and history.
Indonesia is Malaysia’s closest and most important neighbour, and is its ninth-largest trading partner globally and the third in the Asean region after Singapore and Thailand. In 2018, the volume of bilateral trade was recorded at RM72.02 billion, higher by 7.4% from RM71.51 billion in 2017. — Bernama
