Vice President Ma’ruf Amin inaugurated Tomohon in North Sulawesi as a ‘city of tolerance’ by signing an inscription in North Minahasa on Friday.

The signing was conducted after Amin opened the International Harmony Week and the VI National Conference of the Interfaith Communication Forum (FKUB) here on Friday.

“I inaugurate Tomohon City as Indonesia’s city of tolerance,” he stated while delivering the opening speech.

The Indonesian people’s plurality should be continually maintained since their varying religious backgrounds, ethnicities, customs, and cultures led the founding fathers to formulate the Pancasila, he said.

The founding fathers formulated Pancasila as the national ideology to reflect the national consensus, he highlighted.

“The consensus can be realized since each founding father was found to be empathetic, tolerant, unselfish, and prioritized common interests instead of the interests of their groups,” he expounded.

Amin also called on all parties, especially the community and regional administration of Tomohon City, to continually uphold tolerance in a bid to realize the nation’s unity.

“We should maintain our positive attitudes for the sake of the unity of the Republic of Indonesia as the legacy for old, young, Z, and younger generations,” he remarked.

A survey conducted by the Home Affairs Ministry and the Pancasila Ideology Education Agency (BPIP) named two cities—Manado and Tomohon—in North Sulawesi province among the ten most tolerant cities in Indonesia in 2020, he noted.

Manado ranked third with a score of 6,200 and Tomohon city ranked fourth with a score of 6,183 in the survey, he said.

The award was the second that Tomohon City received since 2018 and the fourth for Manado since 2015, he added.

Eight other cities were categorized by the survey as the most tolerant cities: Salatiga, Singkawang, Kupang, Surabaya, Ambon, Kediri, Sukabumi, and Bekasi.

Source: Antara News