Buildings witness progress of history

Buildings witness progress of history

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Masaaki Sanada, the Bangkok bureau chief of Japanese daily Asahi
Shimbun, was initially surprised to see the many pictures of
former leaders of developing countries, like Iranian president
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Malaysian prime minister Mahathir
Mohamad, on display inside the 64,000 sq m Jakarta Convention
Center (JCC).

"I realized the reason later," said Sanada, when he was told
the building was heavily renovated in 1992 by then-president
Soeharto to be used as the venue of the 10th Non-Aligned Movement
(NAM) summit in September that year.

The JCC, located in Senayan, Central Jakarta, along with the
nearly 200-year-old Gedung Pancasila in the foreign ministry
compound on Jl. Pejambon, also in Central Jakarta, will host
three international meetings this week.

On Wednesday, foreign ministers of the 10-member Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will hold their annual
ministerial meeting at Gedung Pancasila.

The ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conferences (PMCs), during which
ASEAN will meet its major dialogue partners, will be held at the
JCC on Thursday and finally, 22 Asia-Pacific foreign ministers
and European Union representatives will attend the ASEAN Regional
Forum (ARF) on Friday in the same building.

The JCC was expanded from its original 6,700 sq m just 10
months before the 1992 NAM summit at a cost of US$100 million,
including a 950 meter-long underground corridor that connects to
the Hilton International Hotel.

Today, the convention center is booked for various commercial
events, from international business conventions, auto shows to
the grand final of the Akademi Fantasi Indosiar, a TV talent
contest. World-class singers such as Mariah Carey, Sting and
Julio Iglesias have also performed at the JCC.

The Gedung Pancasila's date of establishment is not recorded,
but historical documents indicate that it was built sometime in
the 1830s under Dutch colonial rule.

On Dec. 5, 1828, the Dutch authority in Batavia sold the
estate to the Roman Catholic Church Foundation, which built a
church. The church collapsed on April 9, 1880, probably due to
poor construction, and a cathedral was built in 1901.

In between, the original mansion was designed as a residence
of the commander-in-chief of the Royal Netherlands Armed Forces
in the East Indies, who was also the lieutenant governor-general
of the Dutch East Indies. The commander's house was built later
at a nearby estate known as Hertog's Park, named after Hertog van
Saksen Weimar, the commander-in-chief of the Dutch East Indies
from 1848 to 1851. Hertog's Park is now called Pejambon Park,
after a garden on the estate.

The Dutch East Indies governing committee used the mansion as
a meeting place of the people's representatives council, the
Volksraad, and in May 1918, governor-general Count Limburg Stirum
inaugurated it as the Volksraad Building.

The council, whose members were Indonesian citizens, was set
up earlier as an advisory body to the Dutch governing committee,
but was merely a rubber stamp.

In 1943, the building was used by the Japanese occupation
forces for its Central Advisory Body and was named after it as
the Chu-Ou Sangiin Building. The building then witnessed the
rocky road to independence.

In 1944, the Japanese imperial government pledged independence
for Indonesia without providing an exact date, and the building
became a central witness to the country's rocky road to
independence. On May 28, 1945, the Japanese military
administration set up and inaugurated the Committee to
Investigate Preparations for Independence (BPUPKI), tasked with
researching and developing plans for an independent Indonesia, at
the building.