Hon. Soy Pardede, President and Dean of the Association of Honorary Consuls to Indonesia (AHCI), in his welcome speech said:
Before I start my welcome remarks, allow me to invite you all to rise and observe a brief silence in honour and respect of the victims of the super typhoon in the Philippines, Vietnam and China, and pray for the deceased families to be strengthened and blessed by the Lord in heaven.
First of all and foremost, let me humbly invite you all to praise the Lord, the Almighty, for His grace and blessing that enable us all to gather in this City of Heroes, after only last week the Indonesian people celebrated the Heroes’ Day, paying our respect to those who have sacrificed their life for the independence of Indonesia.
I feel honoured, on behalf of the Association of Honorary Consuls to Indonesia (AHCI), to welcome all our fellow Honorary Consuls, their spouses and guests to the 3rd East Asia and Pacific Regional Conference, which is held as a prelude to the 11th World Congress of Consuls for which AHCI and Indonesia has been chosen to host in 2015 in the beautiful island of Bali.
Allow me to pay our deepest gratitude to H.E. Mr. Wardana, the Vice Minister of Indonesia, for sparing his time to address and officially open the conference.
Our samely deep gratitude also goes to Dr. Supachai Panichpakdi for very kindly accepted our invitation to share his very rich expertise on trade and development and its role in the growth of global economy.
Our heartiest gratitude goes to Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, who has graciously agreed to spare his time to come all the way from Kedah, Malaysia, by special aircraft with his charming wife, to give his keynote speech on the theme of the conference “Asia to the World”, reminding us on his fundamental and great role in the economic and nation-building of modern Malaysia, which is a model for not only Asian countries but also other countries in the world to use as a good example for development.
His personal assistant has arrived yesterday and joined us in the welcome reception last night.
To our much surprised we received a telephone call that Dr. Mahathir was advised by his doctor not to fly, and because of that Dr. Mahathir regrets could not materialize his plan to speak in this conference.
We hope that by the absence of Dr. Mahathir the conference remains worthyful with the speech of weights of Dr. Supachai.
In the afternoon session, we will listen to the presentation of the guru of marketing, Mr. Hermawan Kartajaya, himself is also a Honorary Consul of Czech in Surabaya, on the sub-theme of the conference “Honorary Consuls: Beyond the Traditions”, which will be discussed along with the short presentation of Hon. K.L. Ganju on “Consular Immunities, Privileges and Facilities”, which I hope will show how Honorary Consuls conduct their services on voluntary basis for the benefit of inter-states relationship or bilateral basis but also for the global prosperity.
I do hope that all of you will enjoy the conference, and to our guests from overseas, I wish you have a nice stay and enjoyable time in Surabaya.
Last but not least, on behalf of AHCI and its all member, my special thanks to the Organizing Committee, arekarek Suraboyo, who has done a great job to prepare for this special event. God bless you all.
Thank you!
