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In an effort to show pride in the national language, a delegation of the House of Representatives made a commitment on Wednesday to speak Indonesian in overseas forums.

“We see that many other countries are using their own national language in international parliamentary meetings, so we think that we should be proud to start speaking Indonesian,” the chairman of House Inter-parliamentary Cooperation Agency (BKSAP), Hidayat Nur Wahid, said in the House.

Hidayat, who spent 12 years in Medina, Saudi Arabia, earned praise from Sidharta Danusubrata, a lawmaker of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), for the fluent Arabic he used when they joined the plenary meeting of the Islamic Parliamentary Union Council.

“His Arabic is more fluent than his Indonesian. He even criticized other delegations who pronounced Arabic wrongly,” Sidharta said.

House speaker Marzuki Alie said he was surprised to see “every delegation” using its own national language in the Parliamentary Union meeting.

Under the sixth Islamic Parliamentary Union Council Conference, Marzuki was appointed by acclamation as the chairman of the organization for the 2012-2014 period.

Even in the Asian Parliamentary Assembly that was held in December in Bandung, Marzuki said he and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, had wrongly used English to speak at the event.

Under the law on national symbols, language and flag that was endorsed last year, an Indonesian representative or delegation is obliged to speak the national language when holding a conference in the country.

“I was reminded about the law after I delivered speech in English. We just did not realize that we have to speak Indonesian,” Marzuki said.

Learning from the experience, Marzuki called on other Indonesian delegations to get accustomed to speaking Indonesian at other international conferences. “We have to be proud of our own language, because this is our identity as a nation in the world community,” he said.