Jakarta and its problems
Today Jakarta celebrates its 475th anniversary under the shadow of a gubernatorial election. Just a few weeks ago many people believed that Maj. Gen. (ret) Sutiyoso, the incumbent governor, would not run for reelection after so many people had talked about his failures during his five-year term. His spirit to join race might have been rekindled by news reports that President Megawati Soekarnoputri and Vice President Hamzah Haz had endorsed his candidacy. The President needs to clarify this point, especially since Sutiyoso has been implicated in the 1996 attack on the headquarters of the Indonesian Democratic Party, which at the time Megawati chaired.
The gubernatorial election is expected to be a show of democracy in which a number of politicians will participate. The election committee announced recently that 100 people had registered as gubernatorial candidates. Only one or two among the candidates are quite well known to public, but others appear to have emerged from social obscurity.
However, despite the political change, the electoral system remains the same. A governor is elected by factions in the City Council, giving no chance to independent candidates not supported by a faction. When president Soeharto ruled supreme, no councillors had the nerve to oppose his chosen candidate, who was normally nominated by Golkar, his political vehicle.
It is a tragic irony that with Soeharto out of the equation, nothing has really changed. There have been deafening calls for a change in the system. The public has demanded that the president, vice president and provincial governors be directly elected by the people, but members of the House of Representatives have turned a deaf ear to the demand. In a direct election, candidates have the opportunity to announce their platforms, stating how they would improve the people's lot and cure the city's ills, some of which are decades old.
Take for example the burgeoning slums that have been impossible to eradicate for decades. Governor Surjadi Soedirdja, one of Sutiyoso's predecessors, once instructed all municipal officials to detect the emergence of new pockets of slums so that they could be wiped out immediately. Apparently the policy was very difficult in the subdistrict level because nobody really knew how best to discourage slum dwellers from rebuilding once their shanties were demolished. The flood of newcomers would be more likely to slow to a trickle if economic development were carried out more equitably, with a better spread of industrial projects in areas outside of Jakarta and other urban centers.
The new governor will need new ideas on how to deal with the city's traffic debacle. Sutiyoso, after his installation five years ago, said he would abolish the three-in-one traffic policy because it had proven ineffective. The policy bars any private cars with less than three passengers, including the driver, from entering certain areas in the city during morning rush hours. The policy remains in force, and it appears that it will remain so even if Sutiyoso is reelected. He apparently has no actual program to solve the city's traffic problems.
Sutiyoso has mainly been criticized for his failure to reduce the aftermath of the devastating floods in February. He has yet to give a satisfactory answer as to why the impacts of the flood were not foreseen and averted.
If he is reelected he, or any other new governor for that matter, will have to solve the city's garbage problem because the garbage dump in Bekasi, 30 km southeast of here, will be closed next year by the West Java administration.