Greatest gift of all

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Fri, 06/22/2007 9:55 AM  |  Opinion

Jakarta celebrates its 480th anniversary today, but unlike previous years, we mark the birth of our beloved city with a difference. Residents of this sprawling city of 12 million people will have the unprecedented opportunity in August to elect their own leaders to deal with the ever growing and more complex challenges facing Jakarta.

Jakartans will finally enjoy a privilege that was first introduced to citizens of the ancient Greek city of Athens more than two-and-half millennia ago: participatory democracy.

Previously, at least in modern Indonesia, the governor has always been elected or appointed by the city's political elite, through the Legislative Council, and only with the endorsement or approval of the president of the country.

At the very best, it was a rudimentary form of representative democracy. The governor has always been regarded, or seen himself, more as an extension of the national government, answerable first and foremost to the president, rather than someone who truly works for or serves residents.

Before Indonesia's independence, the governor-general of Jakarta, or Batavia as it was then called during Dutch colonial rule, was sent all the way from the Netherlands, and he reported to the queen in The Hague.

Beginning in October this year, we will have a governor who reports to and is accountable only to the people of Jakarta. If he has to quarrel with the president of the country, and this is probably going to occur quite frequently given Jakarta's role as the seat of the nation's capital, the elected governor will have to fight for the interests of residents. No longer will he be subservient to the national leader.

The Jakarta gubernatorial election is the culmination of the democratization and decentralization processes, two major items in Indonesia's political reform agenda launched in 1998. We already introduced direct elections for the presidential poll in 2004, and it went peacefully with quite a large voter turnout.

Beginning in 2005, local elections for provincial governors and regency chiefs were also held in the same direct fashion. Again, every single one of these elections, including one in conflict-prone Aceh last December, went smoothly.

In August, it is the turn of Jakarta.

Given Jakarta's seemingly increasing and at times insurmountable problems and challenges, it would be easy to have a depressed or negative attitude as we mark its anniversary. The gridlock, the suffocating air pollution, the growing frequency of breakdowns in utilities and public services, the flooding that recurs more and more frequently, inundating a wider area each time, and the many other problems are reminders that this beloved city of ours is far from being the ideal place to call home.

At the very least, however, residents of Jakarta can take comfort this year knowing the issue of leadership is now in their hands. They have some control over the fate of the city, at least over who they want to lead it, if not over how they want it managed.

Indonesia's own brief experience with democracy has shown that democratic, free and fair elections have not necessarily produced or delivered the right leaders. We also know that there have been times when the right leaders came through mechanisms that were not democratic. Democracy is not a panacea for the long list of complex problems facing Jakarta.

But participatory democracy puts our fate, by and large, into our own hands, and this goes with the direct election mechanism of the Jakarta gubernatorial poll in August. The fate of the city will no longer be determined solely by the whim of one person, whether in Jakarta or The Hague. It's in our hands.

We all have to live with our choices, and therefore with our mistakes. Even if we send the wrong person to City Hall in Merdeka Selatan, we know we have the power to constantly scrutinize him, and we have the right to kick him out of office in five years' time, if not sooner. And lest we forget, we do learn from our mistakes from one election to another.

That's the beauty of participatory democracy: having some control over our own destiny.

For Jakarta, celebrating its 480th anniversary today, it's probably the greatest gift of all. Let's rejoice for the city, and for democracy.

Happy birthday.

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