This refers to an article titled “Jakarta no longer appropriate as capital”, (The Jakarta Post, Nov. 25.)
Well, you got that right. Not only is Jakarta the world’s only sizable metropolitan without a subway system, it is also such an ill-planned capital that continues groundwater extraction by half the city’s population, causing the land to sink.
It means that floods will become very frequent in the near future, not to mention there will be a complete submergence in to the sea in a little over a decade if nothing is changed. Additionally, there are huge socio-economic problems in Jakarta. It really is a nightmare for any respectable city planner.
Moving capital is definitely not the solution. To say that the government must up and leave is a clear signal of the government’s lack of commitment to change the country’s problem and the betrayal of the people’s expectations for a better Indonesia.
Are you seriously saying that it’s better for us to leave this excuse of a city so that we can create another sorry excuse of a city in some other place?
Stop exporting the problems. Not to mention that all this then poses the question: If the government is not committed to correcting the problem of just one city, the city where the very people who run this government lives, who is to say they can help or even care about the lives of you and me when they can’t seem to even help themselves.
Forget about becoming a superpower, if we can’t even get one city working in order.
What our country needs is change, a more liberal social paradigm, economic competition, a fair and just law, and honest, competent law enforcement. Without these, businesses will be afraid to expand or even start. Jobs that should be created never materialized.
Thus the material wealth, the standard of living of the majority of our people will continue to be pitiful. All the while, the pioneering and scientific spirit of our people will continue to ebb away unabated with the passage of time.
Our current leadership has not shown itself able to implement the necessary changes. It is far more concerned about being voted into office at the next election. Looking as if it is doing something when in fact, it is too weak, too fearful or just favors the status quo.
It has neither the power nor the intention to challenge vested interests of the minority oligarchs. If such a situation persists, it is not only Jakarta that is in jeopardy. Our entire nation, our history, our sovereignty will be in jeopardy.
While other nations continue on their race to the top, we lag behind, crawling with the weight of ideology and monopolistic interests strapped to the feet of our Motherland.
In several decades, we might just find ourselves facing a belligerent power, which has so far surpassed our mastery over science and technology that we would be conquered once more, just as the old kingdoms of Indonesia could not help but surrender when they faced the might of Portuguese, Dutch and British guns centuries ago.
Freeman P.
Jakarta
