From Thamrin to Pramono

In Jakarta, a name is never merely a name. It can become a street, a memory, a direction. And among all the names that have become streets, one feels most representative of the city’s will. That name is MH Thamrin.

He was not a general. Not a president. He was not a revolutionary leader with fiery speeches. He was a Betawi man who thought about the city.

Muhammad Husni Thamrin was born in 1894, in a Batavia still deeply divided — Europeans at the top, Foreign Orientals in the middle, natives at the bottom. The city, at that time, was built not only from stone and canals, but also from profound inequality. Wide roads were for the rulers, narrow alleys for the ruled. Clean water for some, a landscape of pestilence for the rest.

It was there that Thamrin began his politics. Not from ideas about the nation, but from the suffering and wounds of the city.

He entered the Gemeenteraad of Batavia, the colonial city council, and later the Volksraad. But what he brought was not the elite language of The Hague — it was the language of the kampung. Issues of drinking water, urban slums, public health, and the right of the Betawi people to live with dignity upon the land of their birth.

He understood something rarely grasped by other independence fighters of his time: that colonisation did not only reach those at the top, but also into the corners of the city. That colonialism was not only about flags, but also about spatial planning. When he demanded kampung improvements, it was not merely about sanitation. It was the politics of dignity.

Thamrin was often considered “moderate”. He did not deliver orations like Soekarno. He did not wage guerrilla warfare like Sudirman or Tan Malaka. He chose to debate in colonial chambers, write memoranda, and press for policy change. But therein lay his radicalism. He forced the colonial power to speak about the urban populace it had long disregarded.

He championed what would become the Kampung Improvement Programme, long before the term existed. He demanded public housing. He raised issues of public health. He spoke of transport and markets. In other words, he envisioned Jakarta as a city for its citizens, not merely a stage for power.

Thamrin: Indonesia’s First City Politician

There is a story often forgotten. In 1939, the colonial government accused him of concealing documents of the national movement. His home was raided. He was placed under surveillance. He was cornered. He died in January 1941 — under political pressure, under colonial watch, with his health in steady decline.

He did not live to see Indonesian independence. But he had planted something that came earlier: the idea that a city must be just towards its citizens.

Eighty-five years later, Jakarta still grapples with the same question. Who has the right to the city? Amidst glass towers, flyovers, reclamation projects, and vertical apartments, Thamrin’s shadow occasionally appears — like an old voice that never truly departed.

20 February 2026. Jakarta marks one year under the leadership of Governor Pramono Anung. A consummate technocrat. A calm administrator. Not a fervent orator.

Yet it is precisely there that a fine thread becomes visible — between Thamrin and Pramono. Thamrin believed urban change occurred through concrete policy: through regulations, budgets, and programmes. He worked from within the colonial system to improve the lives of the city’s people. Pramono works from within the modern bureaucracy towards a similar aim: organising public services, transport, decent housing, and Jakarta’s governance as a global city.

Where Thamrin debated clean water for the kampungs, Pramono is vigorously pushing the renewal of the city’s piped water network. He wants all Jakarta residents to have access to clean water before 2030. Where Thamrin demanded public housing in Batavia, Pramono is accelerating affordable housing in Jakarta. Where Thamrin fought for citizens’ representation in policymaking, Pramono is strengthening data, planning, and needs-based governance.

They are separated by a century, yet united by a single idea: that a city must be managed with reason, not with spectacle or sensation.

There are differences, certainly. Thamrin lived under colonialism, where his politics were resistance within constraints. Pramono lives in a republic, where his politics are management within mandate. Yet both possess an ethos rarely found: a quiet loyalty. Not to elites, not to symbols, not to the national stage — but to the citizenry.

Jakarta has often been led by towering figures: Ali Sadikin, Sutiyoso, Jokowi, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, Anies Baswedan. Pramono arrives with something more subdued — technocracy that works in earnest. In the city’s history, this type of leader is often not immediately understood, because he does not inflame emotions. He chooses not to work under the glare of cameras and social media sensation. Instead, he organises systems. And it is there that he is closest to Thamrin.

Thamrin did not deliver speeches about independence in grand squares. He drafted budget proposals. He debated sanitation. He inspected kampungs. Urban politics, at its core, is the politics of detail.

Perhaps that is why Thamrin’s name has never faded in Jakarta. He is not merely a ceremonial boulevard. He is a reminder that this city was once thought about seriously by a Betawi son who knew that citizens’ dignity begins with water flowing in their homes, roads their feet can walk upon, and spaces that acknowledge their existence.

As Pramono Anung approaches one year of leading Jakarta, the same question returns. Is this city increasingly becoming its citizens’ own?

The answer is not yet complete. A city is never complete. But every effort to organise services, improve housing, expand access, and strengthen governance is a small echo of Thamrin’s old idea: that urban justice is not rhetoric, but daily work.

If one evening, on Jalan MH Thamrin, the lights shine and vehicles flow ceaselessly, perhaps we can imagine something: a Betawi man in a suit, walking slowly, observing the city he once defended at the colonial table.

Ultimately, a city is not a row of concrete, but a promise perpetually renewed between power and its citizens. In every repaired pavement, every home fit for habitation, every service that humanises, there is an invisible trace of MH Thamrin’s thought. And if these days Pramono Anung is organising the city with the quietude of work and the precision of figures, he is surely continuing the old prayer of a Betawi politician who believed that urban civilisation is not built by the thunder of words, but by the quietest loyalty to human dignity.

And so Jakarta will continue to grow. Not only towards the sky, but inward — becoming a city that finally comes home to its citizens.

Rano Karno is the Vice Governor of DKI Jakarta.