Wanted: A trustworthy and competent Jakarta governor

Wanted: A trustworthy and competent Jakarta governor

Marco Kusumawijaya, Urban Development Consultant, Jakarta

How important, really, is a governor for Jakarta?
He or she is important only if he or she becomes the star captain
(think of Johan Cruyf, for example) of a total-football team
consisting of all its population, wherein everybody is encouraged
to play skillfully, picking up all available opportunities, and
is given sufficient space to contribute his or her talents and
abilities to win the game.

Why is this totality (not to be equated with totalitarianism)
not only necessary but also the only way to win the game?

This year, the anniversary of Jakarta is special. It coincides
with the occasion of electing for the first time a new governor
after the fall of the New Order. Strong views are being aired.
Not surprising really considering that the incumbent governor is
one of the remaining appointees of the New Order. Making reform
successful in Jakarta, by, among other things, ousting him from
office, is therefore a very significant symbol of renewing the
vigor of the reform movement as a whole.

Jakarta is now at its lowest ebb. Compared to the other
capitals of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, it ranks
only above Phnom Penh and Vientiane. Among 40 Asian cities, it
ranks 29th, below Bandung and Surabaya, actually.

That is according to a survey by the now defunct Asia Week.
Nationally, Jakarta has become one of the tardiest cities in
reforming its governance. Historically, as compared to the era of
governor Ali Sadikin, Jakarta now rates lower in terms of safety
and security, public discipline, trust between the people and the
bureaucracy, pride among its people, cleanliness, poverty,
environmental quality, and public infrastructure and services.

Jakarta needs to take a big leap into the mainstream of global
and national competitiveness. It can no longer take for granted
its privileges as the national capital. The case of the Bantar
Gebang dump is only one example of its declining privileges.

The required big leap involves strategic issues such as a
sound public transportation system that should enhance the
efficient mobility of all the population, reducing the length of
their wasted time in the streets from, say, an average of two
hours to one hour per day. Land-use plans and controls should be
enforced to support the transportation system and to achieve
sustainable environmental quality.

Drastic measures should also be undertaken as regards
environmental matters. Flood control is but one objective. More
strategic than all the individual issues, however, is the inter-
relation between them. A big leap forward is required to
strategically bring Jakarta in the direction of becoming a just,
green and revitalized sustainable city in all aspects.

All things considered, the current window of opportunity is a
"now-or-never" moment for making strategic choices and actions,
especially as it is so clear that the results will only become
apparent after some time. Jakarta has been denied what it
deserves for too long, while other world cities move ahead into
the future confidently.

But Jakarta has been and will remain a city with a relatively
high quality of infrastructural and human resources, including,
ironically, the most skilled bureaucrats in the country. Plans
and knowledge about what to do with Jakarta are abundant and
never short. The metropolis has also boasts a very high degree of
activism among its population. All sorts of civil society
organizations can be found here.

Their activism during the latest flood disaster proved more
productive than all the government's doings. Every single square
centimeter of the metropolitan area contains some potential
added-value, waiting to be actualized.

Parking and outdoor advertising are easy examples, to mention
a few, of underexploited resources because of corruption and non-
transparency.

Clearly, to improve (more than just to build) Jakarta is not a
problem of what to do and resources, but of how to do it. For
this, there is need for breakthroughs.

It is within that context that a governor, being a captain of
a total football team, is a key success factor. Because the
matter of how to do things is, above all, a matter of leadership
and management. Jakarta requires a leader capable of mobilizing
all its potential and the participation of its population to
achieve the goal of total improvement.

To possess that capability, there is one absolute pre-
requisite: The leader must gain the trust of the population, and
bureaucracy, which he or she will need to clean up first of all.
For that he needs to be absolutely clean. Only that way can the
leader unite with the people in terms of motivation, vision and
orientation.

His or her relationship with society will be mutually
beneficial. Only with popular support can he build anew a clean,
efficient and vigorous system, and a bureaucracy capable of
serving and engaging in collaboration with the citizens to make
the big, difficult leap. Only with a clean and trusted leader
will people want to collaborate and participate in the ambitious
programs that Jakarta deserves, and actually cannot put off
embarking on, in order to survive amid tight global competition.

The politicians and bureaucrats can choose to corrupt the
annual budget like kids stealing unripe mangoes, making it a
paralyzed instrument year by year.

But, on the other hand, they can opt to use the same amount
trusted to them wisely to mobilize the much larger capacity of
the whole city. We need them to show us the correlation between
what the annual budget does and the Gross Regional Domestic
Product.

We need a trustworthy and competent governor capable of
working together with us.