Jakarta (berita baru, “the mad doctor”, and wisdom)

 

 

 

Citayam

berita baru

Jakarta Urban Blog would like to note (since the last post) the passing of Ali Sadikin on May 20, 2008.  Ali Sadikin was governor of Jakarta from 1966 through 1977.  Since his death most comments I have seen seem to be favorable about his tenure as governor. 

From Jakarta Post, May 25, 2008, Ali Sadikin an inspiration for Indonesia’s younger generation, Abdul Khalik/Tifa Asrianti

“Former Jakarta governor Ali Sadikin, who died Tuesday, is remembered by Indonesia’s youth as a consistent and brave champion of the poor”.

Sadikin is known for much in the history of Jakarta and for his  “vibrant, colorful, immediate and compelling charm” as Abeyasekere writes. Sadikin was a dashing kick-ass Indonesian Marine and his vision of Jakarta was as a METROPOLITAN CITY (as Abeyasekere says this was always in captial letters and we might as well make them bold in addition). He and his staff wrote the Jakarta Master Plan (1965-1985) which was passed as a law in 1967 to adress the city’s problems in a systematic way and to plan future land use. 

Systematic he was and he is known for land clearances, street clearnces of street vendors and prostitutes, the arrest and jailing of beggars, the notorius seizure and destruction of the becak, and to even declaring Jakarta “a closed city” to further migration.  Ultimately, as Abeyasekere notes, Sadikin had to resign himself to the fact of a very large and growing population of urban poor.  On the one hand there was supression of undesirable elements like the beggars and prostitutes and on the other a concerted effort to improve the condition of the kampungs. Sadikin achieved success in part as the Jakarta economy, at least to 1974, was booming under the New Order and their motto of ‘Development’. Dangdut music was the new wave and Golkar lost the 1974 elections in Jakarta. His later participation in the ‘Petition 50′ in 1980 is also noted.

In the end Sadikin’s efforts were such that Jakarta was made even more attractive than before to those in the search for the “good life”.  As usual it’s a hard luck story.

Of all Jakarta’s governors since long gone Batavia  he was the best.  There is a certain political courage seen in Sadikin’s later life and lasting until the end.

Two new books have recently crossed my desk and are worth looking at.

CONFRONTATION: THE WAR WITH INDONESIA 1962 – 1966 by Nick van der Bijl, Pen and Sword, 2008.

This is a kind of “only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun” war book.

As described, “At any one time up to 50,000 troops (half of the Army’s strength today) were deployed along a 1,000 mile front. Their enemy were the communist led Indonesians whose leaders were determined to seize the states of Sarawak, Sabah and the oil rich Brunei, all of whom for their part wished to maintain their Commonwealth links. The catalyst for the war was the 1962 uprising in Brunei which was quickly crushed by the bold intervention of British army units”. 

Most of the book is about how the British knocked the crap out of Indonesian “confrontasi” through the skilled command of British led forces. There is a lot of operational detail in the book. The political background to these events is well outlined.   The British called Soekarno “the mad doctor”.  The book is full of revelations about the heavy involvement of the CIA in the politics of the time, supporting insurgencies through Indonesia and then betraying them to regular Indonesian forces.  The book also outlines the roles of the PKI and the development of the Indonesian TNI and their relationships to events in North Borneo.

There is one item the book includes as Appendix I,  Fundamentals of Guerrilla War, summarizing the theories of Colonel Nasution. Nasution, of course, led Indonesian forces in 1948, was twice appointed Army Chief of Staff, and otherwise had quite an eventful career.  Nasution’s first fundamental is “War in this century has become a total people’s war”.   Some of these theories were thrown together as Nastion contemplated the prospect of having to take the war to the Dutch with bases in the villages of the mountains of Java.  In light of  students on the streets of Jakarta being arrested for protesting fuel price increases Nasution is worth reading, at least for those who realize the people’s war must now be an urban one.

 

The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS by Elizabeth Pisani, W.W. Norton, 2008.

The editorial review calls it as  ”a flame-throwing epidemiologist talks about sex, drugs, and the mistakes (dismal), ideologies (vicious), and hopes (realistic) of international AIDS prevention”.

This book is about how we need a new paradigm.  Her web site The Wisdom of Whores is also worth looking at.