Johannes Nugroho: When Visions for Jakarta Collide
The sound of drumming could be heard emanating from the crowds. Using whatever came to hand: wooden sticks, planks and discarded tins, the residents of Bukit Duri who refused to be relocated by the government banged away as they watched their houses being razed to the ground late last month. The scene was both poignant and defiant, reminiscent of the way Javanese villagers used to drum away the demon Batara Kala during a solar or lunar eclipse.
The recent demolition of slums in Jakarta has also released some demons haunting Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, better known as Ahok. The controversial move has split Jakarta into two opposing camps.
To his supporters, Ahok is a leader courageous enough to act on an issue from which his most recent predecessors and contemporary regional executives have tended to shy away. They further defend his bulldozing action with a number of arguments.
First, it was necessary to clear the river banks from the dank tenements to maximize the river's rainwater containment function. Second, most of the buildings were illegally built while the land belongs to the state. Third, the government has provided apartments for the squatters to move into, albeit not rent free, so they will not be homeless.
To the critics of the governor's demolition drive, his decision was inhumane. Plucking people away from their homes – many of the residents had lived there for decades − and expecting them to move into apartment blocks took no account of their emotional attachment to their former homes. The impersonal nature of the relocation scheme was seen to have dehumanized the residents as chattel to be moved at the whims of a government obsessed with efficiency.
Human rights activists have criticized Ahok for not taking a more humane approach such as revamping the slums into elevated kampongs (kampung deret). Yet the governor said the scheme was inapplicable due to the illegal status of land ownership in Bukit Duri.
The activists have also leveled accusations of legal impropriety against the governor for demolishing the tenements while a legal suit by the residents was still lodged in the courts. In response, Ahok defended the action by citing a 2002 regulation that allows the state to appropriate land for important public works. The governor also argued that there is an urgency to "normalize" the function of the river banks of the Ciliwung before the rainy season starts later in the year.
To be fair, both sides have put forth valid arguments. It essentially boils down to the two different visions for Jakarta the opposing sides espouse. Ahok's appears to be in sync with the aspirations of Indonesia's middle classes, although it is not easy to define what constitutes the Indonesian middle class.
The Indonesian middle class is nothing like its Western counterpart. The World Bank estimates that about 82 percent of Indonesia's population, or approximately 200 million people, lives on less than $4 per day, while 18 percent of Indonesians, or roughly 44 million, spend between $4 and $20 per day, a mere trifle by the First World's middle-class standards. More importantly, the middle classes are concentrated in urban areas where they make up about 26 percent of the population.
Now that many middle-class Indonesians can afford to travel overseas, they have started to compare their own cities with those abroad. Ahok himself has on a number of occasions said that he would like Jakarta to be on par with Singapore in orderliness, cleanliness and safety. For the governor and his supporters, this vision of a Jakarta proudly in the same league with other great metropolises of the world has become a fixation.
Yet in pursuing the vision, Ahok has perhaps forgotten that Jakarta's slums have always been intertwined with the history of the city itself. To write off the residents' humanity as irrelevant simply because they are essentially illegal residents is not the way forward. The governor should also bear in mind that whatever happens in the capital may set the tone for the rest of the country. In this, he should endeavor to set the best and most humane example as possible.
Admittedly, there is no easy solution in this. For a country where the rule of law often takes a backseat, the governor is not wrong to stress the legal side of the debate instead of blind populism. However, staring across the divide are the marginalized Jakarta residents who lived or grew up in slums.
They may not be able to afford overseas holidays and may not be familiar with how things are done in other countries, but they deserve to be treated as human beings, as residents, who for better or worse, have contributed to and been part of Jakarta.
It may take years or decades for them to get accustomed to and accept the gentrification drive of the country's middle classes. Experimentation with the elevated kampong concept may be worth pursuing if Jakarta does not want to end up a modern globalized city devoid of its own identity.
Yet implementing such a long-term project is not without its difficulties in Indonesia where bureaucratic tenacity and stamina tend to run thin. The ecological scheme to drive down plastic consumption by making modern retail customers pay for their grocery bags, for instance, has foundered in many places after a few months of its inception.
It remains to be seen upon which path Jakarta will set itself, in view of early next year's gubernatorial election. The vote will tell us which vision for Jakarta the city residents favor. Whatever the people choose, let us hope that in its developmental drive, Jakarta will not lose sight of its humanity and history.
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