Jakarta and its problems

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.