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The week in review: The law of nature
There are tragedies and events that humans can anticipate beforehand and there are others whose timing is difficult to predict, despite signals or warnings sent by nature long in advance
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here are tragedies and events that humans can anticipate beforehand and there are others whose timing is difficult to predict, despite signals or warnings sent by nature long in advance. That is exactly what happened this past week in Indonesia.
Events began with two “disasters” on Monday — one man-made disaster in the capital city and then a natural calamity in a remote area thousands of kilometers away from Jakarta in the Mentawai Islands of West Sumatra.
The man-made disaster in Jakarta was the shocking gridlock that paralyzed the city’s toll roads and major thoroughfares, forcing traffic to a standstill for hours from the afternoon until midnight.
A road accident and numerous trees that fell amid heavy rains were the cause of the jams. But traffic worsened and turned into gridlock when vehicles in the millions were trapped and could not pass through deep “pools” of water in many parts of the city. Heavy downpours also took the life of a woman who was swept away by strong currents.
As a result, Governor Fauzi Bowo has become the target of widespread criticism from the general public, with comments posted or aired not only on regular media outlets such as newspapers, news portals and television stations, but also on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Gridlock was believed to have reached its worst level ever on Monday. However, it is not expected to be the last such incident in the near future. The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) predicted that heavy rains would continue until February.
Meanwhile, as residents of Jakarta and its suburbs struggled to reach home on Monday, their fellow citizens in the Mentawai Islands struggled to escape from a tsunami hours after a 7.2-magnitude earthquake shook the islands. The tsunami’s giant waves, reportedly 6 to 12 meters high, have killed more than 400 people, destroyed 430 houses, damaged 190 others as well as flattened 10 churches and an elementary school. More than 2,000 people have been displaced and are now living in tents.
Unlike the gridlock, which received intense media coverage as it happened in the heart of the capital city, the earthquake and tsunami in Mentawai failed to get immediate intense coverage due to difficulties in reaching the remote islands.
The devastating impact of the tsunami only received full media coverage a day later when the nation witnessed another disaster, the eruption of Mount Merapi in Central Java. Ash clouds — with a temperature of 600 degrees Celsius and moving at 300 kilometers per hour — swept the slope of the volcano and its surroundings and killed dozens of people, including Merapi’s spiritual guardian, Mas Surakso Hargo, popularly known as Mbah Maridjan.
So shocking was the impact of the tsunami and the eruption that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his entourage, including First Lady Kristiani Herawati and several ministers, cut short a visit to the ASEAN Summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, and returned to Indonesia. The President arrived in the West Sumatra capital, Padang, on Wednesday, and visited the worst-hit location, South Pagai Island, on the following day.
Merapi’s eruption also interrupted this year’s Speedy Tour d’Indonesia. In the wake of the eruption, organizers of the annual international cycling competition canceled stage five of the tour — from Semarang to Yogyakarta — which was initially scheduled for Wednesday.
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Apart from the past week’s man-made and natural disasters, the nation also witnessed a twist in the alleged bribery case implicating Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) deputies Bibit Samad Rianto and Chandra M. Hamzah. The Attorney General’s Office (AGO) announced Friday that the case against the pair would be halted for the sake of national stability.
After weeks of indecisiveness, acting Attorney General Darmono told a media conference that the AGO had decided to conduct a deponeering of the case against the deputies. Deponeering is an Indonesian term, derived from Dutch, for a legal action whereby the AGO can halt a case, with the backing of the House of Representatives and the executive, for the sake of national stability.
Officials such as Denny Indrayana from the President’s team of legal experts and Anas Urbaningrum, chairman of President Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party, previously said that deponeering was the most appropriate measure to take in the case of Bibit and Chandra. Meanwhile, many legislators, in the absence of a united stance of the House as an institution, have expressed support of the deponeering.
Now that the case has been halted, hopes loom large in the general public that the KPK will continue full steam in its investigation of rampant corruption in the country. It is a good outcome, better even than the immediate selection of a new KPK chairman. The ball is now in the hands of the House which has been tasked with selecting the KPK’s new chairman after a presidentially sanctioned recruitment team submitted two candidates for the post — lawyer Bambang Widjojanto and outgoing Judicial Commission (KY) chairman Busyro Muqoddas.
In the meantime, all citizens must prepare for the worst over the next few months — due to unpredictable weather as well as Indonesia’s unfortunate location in the so-called Ring of Fire, which places it under serious risk from earthquakes and potential tsunamis.
— Imanuddin Razak
