Bung Karno and the New Jakarta

Abeyasekere in Jakarta: A History (1987) quotes a becak driver in 1977: “I want a governor who can  bring back a time like Sukarno gave us. We were free to make a living and to trade. Not like now: everywhere we’re picked on”.  Abeyasekere states, “the central fallacy which has persisted from 1619 to the present is that it is possible to create a city for the privileged few, cut off from the countryside and the majority of the poor”.   In Koch’s The Year of Living Dangerously,  Soekarno mocks the ABS reporter Hamilton’s questions: “Hey, Sukarno, why do you pour out all this money on Jakarta? I will tell you the answer I give. My people cringed for a long time.  They called us a coolie among nations. But now we are on our feet, and the world takes heed. And my people need a capital worthy of them — a capital to stiffen their spines: a world capital.  Do not yet judge my country by New Jakarta, which is not complete. Judge Indonesia by Borobudur, and the beautiful rice-bowl of West Java. Yet wait a little more, and you will see the New Jakarta I am creating. Already it is becoming a Paris, a city of light to inspire struggling humanity”.

What would Bung Karno say now?

 video from YouTube