2003: For poor, year of living more precariously

2003: For poor, year of living more precariously

This is how the draconian government in Jakarta failed to
respect calls to display political virtue, even on the eve of
Idul Fitri. On that special night, its demolition crews evicted
roadside vendors in Mampang, Kebayoran Lama, Pondok Labu, Lebak
Bulus and Pasar Minggu. These actions marked a continuation of a
series of forced evictions to get rid of the poor from Jakarta.
This has also been the fate of slum dwellers and other urban poor
groups for years.

Sanitizing Jakarta from the poor? Will this take the form of
poverty alleviation? No, it takes the form of uprooting the poor
from the places where they live and from their sources of
livelihood. In the past few years, the Islamic fasting month
(Ramadhan) is usually a period of respite, but then the eviction
rampages resume with even more intensity and brutality after
Idul Fitri.

Why does it happen? Are they some illegal group that does not
belong in Jakarta? Indeed, the law is one reason constantly used
and abused to justify the evictions. When legal arguments are
proven weak, the Jakarta authorities shift at will to using city
cleanliness as the justification. When cleanliness as an apology
goes bankrupt, they resort to using the term "public purpose" to
justify the evictions. What is the real reason? In order to
understand what's really taking place, we need to reveal the
masquerade.

Let's start with the legal arguments. The issue of law in this
country is a slippery one. If what the authorities mean by being
legal is the holding of an identity card, as the authorities
always insist, 73.2 percent of those uprooted by the evictions
possess identity cards. If what the authorities mean is the
length of stay, many of the evicted persons have been there for
more than 20 years, the length of stay which gives the occupants
some legal entitlements, as clearly stated by article 1963 of the
Civil Code (and passim).

In the end, the issue of legal status can be boiled down to
the issue of private property. It needs to be emphasized that
occupying others' private land is an act of trespassing under the
law of property. There are hardly any objections to such a
commonsense notion. What are suspect are the following problems.

First, as is clearly stated by the Civil Code (article 1963,
passim), occupying a piece of land for 20 years or more without
any objection from the owner gives the occupant adverse
possession, that is, the right to obtain title to the land, or
what is commonly termed "squatters rights". He/she also has the
right to be issued with title certificates. As discovered in a
series of field investigations conducted by the Jakarta Social
Institute (ISJ) and Jakarta Residents' Forum (FAKTA), many of the
evictees have lived in the areas for uninterrupted periods
spanning between 20 and 53 years, had identity cards and paid
their taxes.

As Ms. Maria Sumardjono of Gadjah Mada University
(Yogyakarta), an agrarian law expert, has rightly attested in a
closed meeting of 15 academics concerned with the current wave of
forced evictions (Nov. 11, 2003), the fact that no objections
were raised against the occupation of the land during these
periods constitutes "tacit consent" in legal terminology. No
doubt, this remains the topic of a heated debate.

Secondly, the legal grounds employed become even more suspect
when we zoom in closer on the legal status of the occupied land.
As discovered by the ISJ and FAKTA, most of the land occupied by
the victims consist of so-called "state land", i.e., land legally
owned by the government. But since the government is nothing but
a public agency whose raison d'etre is provided by its citizens,
such land belongs to all citizens, rich and poor alike, as is
merely being taken care of by the government. This notion may
sound odd, but, as will subsequently become clear, it is here
that we should look for the basic motive behind the evictions.

At a deeper level, there is no question that the government is
obliged by constitutional duty to look after the nation's poor.
This is more than simply abstract wordplay. It involves the
extent to which the government uses the land entrusted to its
care in carrying out its constitutional duty. Is this noble duty
being performed by the government? Ask the ordinary people on the
street and those are expert in this field, and what you will get
is a chorus of negative answers. In addition, these eviction
operations involve not only the use of force and violence, but
also arson.

Is this statement a form of blackmail? The answer to this is
in the negative. Even those who pursue the eviction plan with
zeal have admitted employing such tactics. We may learn from the
following admission from Mr. Toni Budiono, the director of the
North Jakarta Public Order Office: "Burnings and 'scorched-earth'
are among the stratagems used in the evictions. If necessary, the
residences are burnt down to ease the process (Kompas, Nov. 2,
2001). If what is really taking place on the ground is alien to
us, perhaps this is because we have not sufficiently accommodated
this dark reality into our armchair conception about Indonesia's
political economy.

Why should it be linked to the political economy issue? The
reason is simple: because it is here that the main reason behind
the evictions is to be found. We may start with the following
question: "After the evictions, what will the land be used for?"
Or, the question could also be stated in the following manner:
"After the evictions, who will control this state land?"

We can simply ignore the statements repeatedly issued by the
authorities -- that the land will be used "for public purposes"
-- for, to speak metaphorically, the proof of the pudding is in
the eating. As the pattern of evictions monitored over the past
three years attests, most of the land in question has
subsequently been handed over to private business interests.

Take one example, the eviction of 206 families who have been
eking out a living from fishing in East Ancol, North Jakarta,
since 1950. They had been in the area for 51 years at the time of
their eviction in 2001. The land on which they lived was neither
private land nor, strictly put, registered as state land. It was
land composed of sedimentary deposits that was created by the
"miracle" of natural geological formation; that is to say, this
land did not exist previously. By violently evicting those 206
families, the Jakarta government snatched the land and gave it to
a private firm, PT. Bahtera Sejahtera, for the construction of a
Yacht Club and aquatic sports center. This case was no exception.
This same thing happened with the eviction of 543 families in
Kampung Beting, North Jakarta (the area was handed over to
private firm PT. Karindo Karya), as well as the eviction that
took place in Sunter Jaya, North Jakarta, in 2003.

The list could be extended further, and what it indicates is
that the government's constitutional duty is being willingly
abdicated to business interests. The power of money has
supplanted constitutional duty. This merely reflects the general
character of the current political economy in this country. As
the evictions against the poor continue unabated, many obscene
privileges are extended to business interests. The prime example
is the free ride given to indebted bankers by means of a scheme
whose name, the release & discharge scheme, is so alien to
ordinary people. The scheme led to colossal losses on the part of
the taxpayer amounting to Rp 75 trillion (IBRA Document, October
203).

If this is really how our economy is being run, then are a
truly pathetic nation. We are pathetic in the sense that we
continue to think that only modern big businesses has the capital
resources needed to create an economic nirvana. While such a
viewpoint is not entirely flawed, it is blind to the reality of
the economic hardship so long endured by ordinary people in this
country. With regard to an eviction operation that was to have
been carried out in Surabaya, East Java, Mr. Andy Siswanto, an
academic and urban planner involved in the case, carefully
calculated the following costs. Since we have a penchant to shy
away from assessing costs that involve psychological damage and
the destruction of social fabric, let's just use the dryly
measurable economic costs. The planned eviction of 1368 families
would incur the loss of Rp 380 billion in people's economic
assets and capital. Of course, these 1368 families do not belong
to the economic elite but to the category called the "people's
economy".

The evictions must be stopped and a rational alternative
sought. There should be no evictions carried out without prior
accommodation being provided -- accommodation that provides the
space needed for economic survival. In political terms, it is
high time for us to withdraw our support from any parties or
politicians/powerholders that continue with the forced evictions.
They no longer have any right to govern.

The poor also own the city, be it Jakarta or any other city.
As poignantly asked by a child called Bara, 5, amid a violent
eviction in Teluk Gong, North Jakarta, "Why are mere statues
given so much space in Jakarta, while we are not?" -- B. Herry-Priyono