Back to Jakarta (back to the future)

Trends and Emergent Properties

Giant Rat of the Foja Mountains    (five times bigger than common city rat)

Gong Xi Fat Chai – Year of the Rat

Asia Times

New year bonus for Indonesia’s Chinese

 By Kalinga Seneviratne

During the authoritarian regime of president Suharto (1967-98), public displays of Chinese culture were banned, and many Chinese were asked to change their names to Indonesian ones if they wished to be eventually considered for citizenship. “Suharto’s government saw Chinese characters and culture as political. We were not even allowed to make candles,” said Yu Le, a member of a Buddhist temple.

He said he now prefers to use his Chinese name rather than his adopted Indonesian one of Suherman. “Around the temple there were always police and military. We could not celebrate Imlek here. People were afraid to come. We had to do it at home, hiding.” …>go to article

At the start of the Chinese lunar new year it is tradtional to make predictions about the character of the coming year.  In this Year of the Rat it appears CAUTION will be the watchword as Chinese fortune tellers predict financial and political rumblings, tsunamis and epidemics in the year ahead…

“The mounts of Anak Krakatau, Merapi and Kelud, which last year did not generate a relatively huge explosion, may spew their infernal lava this year,” Jakarta-based feng shui expert Master Tan told The Jakarta Post, placing the eruptions between March and August. “To tell you the truth, I am so worried about these three volcanos… I hope this time my prediction misses.” While mainstream Chinese astrology lists this year as an “Earth” year, Master Tan says it is a fire year, combining the sky element with its positive soil and the earth element with its positive water, producing “fire thunder”. Surabaya-based feng shui practitioner Putri Wong Kam Fu has had the same vision of the three volcanoes. “I don’t know when they will erupt. But if we all repent, they will not explode as a volcanic eruption is actually an admonition of us humans,” she said. …>go to article

One does not necessarily need to be a feng shui practitioner to make predictions regarding the coming year for Jakarta. A close review of the news will do.  As per Indonesia: volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis are a sure thing. No difficulty there. 

I offer a few of my own predictions here:

Soeharto’s “hero status”.  Not going to happen.

The oddest (perhaps not) scandal relating to that came at the conference of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption held on Bali on Februrary 2, 2008. Delegates were asked to bow their heads in a minute of silence to observe the passing of Indonesian dictator Soeharto. SBY jetted off to attend the funeral. The Sydney Morning Hearald reported that, “Dismayed by the irony of the conference’s condolences for Soeharto, Filipino activist Vincent Lazatan took the stage on Wednesday to present civil society groups call for stronger, quicker action to combat corruption – demanding a transparent, effective review mechanism”.  First, he asked all delegates to stand for a second time. “Please, a minute’s silence for all those who have died fighting corruption,” Mr Lazatan demanded. They stood”.  The whole thing seemed simply and utterly strange.

Another interesting development which may tarnish the hero status thing is reported by TempoInteraktif.

“Cendana” Family’s Wealth May be Confiscated as Guarantee
Tuesday, 05 February, 2008

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: The state attorney team from the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) is of the opinion that the assets of Suharto’s beneficiaries can be included in the list of guaranteed confiscation in the Supersemar Foundation civil case. According to Yoseph Suardi Sabda, one of the attorneys from the AGO, it can be the responsibility if the foundation’s assets are insufficient to meet the claim’s value. “The AGO can include it by a request during the trial,” he said in Jakarta last Saturday (2/2). …>go to article

If the family moves assets the AGO can move to confiscate them.  Nice.

While the Golkar Party proposes Soeharto as a hero of Indonesia the people dispose. The voices of his victims still live, the historical record too concrete for this to ever happen, now or later.  Of interest is the recent annoucement by the Univerity of Westminster to fund Innovative film project to document Indonesia’s hidden genocide …>go to article

Floods.  There will be more.

Haven’t we been here before? As Jakartass has recently written, “Jeez”.  My comment there was, “welcome to the new Jakarta (or old Jakarta as the case may be). Soon some enterprising individual will start a water taxi service. Jakarta will be the Venice of the Java Sea”. 

Miko added, “already happened Thomas, when Jalan Thamrin turned into a tributary of the Ciliwung river I watched as several enterprising individuals rowed boats down along the Busway picking up passengers and dropping them off at the nearest dry spot. The most ingenious chap for me was the sampah man (scavenger) who used his cart to take people across the flooded car park of Sarinah to the relative dryness of the overpass, for a small fee I hope.

Curiously I couldn’t help but notice the complete lack of Jakarta’s finest money earners who normally populate Jalan Thamrin in large numbers but who seemed to have disappeared completely.

Traffic was directed by street boys, the old and infirm were assisted by passers-by but nary a peeler was to be seen”.

This, of course, jogged my memory of the Jakarta floods of February 2007, where I saw on MetroTV vegetable sellers using rafts to bring their produce to flooded upscale neigborhoods.

Perhaps SBY will have to tow a boat behind his Mercy Benz so he does not get his feet wet (again).

Still, Jakarta as the Venice of the Java Sea has quite a ring to it. I can see the tourist brochures even now.  As the Official Indonesian Tourism web site quotes Frieda Pinto from India, “Everything in Indonesia are great, I never thought about it the moment I came here…“   Or Wai Lok from Hongkong, “I’ll tell them, that the negative thing we heard about Indonesia is a fake news”.

Thought about what? Fake news? Am I missing something here?

In any event flooding is a trend and emergent property which is here to stay.

More ominously…

H5N1. I have written on this subject before below. 

Flu burung, bird flu. It is out there in Jakarta stewing and brewing.  The virus is extremely lethal and while only 103 people have died from it so far there remains a huge uncertainty of where this is all going, except that it is not going away.  This is yet another trend and emergent propety of Jakarta living.

AFP 2.6.2008

‘Mysterious’ bird flu baffles Indonesian scientists

JAKARTA (AFP) – Indonesian scientists and officials said they were baffled by the “mysterious” behaviour of the bird flu virus here, which has already claimed nine lives this year in the world’s worst-hit nation.Indonesia has reported 126 cases of H5N1 bird flu, 103 of them fatal, since 2005. This year’s victims have all come from the capital Jakarta and its satellite cities. …>go to article

Traffic.  I predict there will be a traffic jam in Jakarta in 2008.

Barack Obama.  Jakarta’s favorite son polls 75% of the 100 expat votes cast. 

Reuters 2.6.08

Many Indonesians cheer Obama in Democrat race …>go to article

If you cannot predict you can hope…

How am I doing so far?  When it comes to Jakarta it is not difficult to end up talking or writing in circles. 

As the novelist Haruki Murakami has written, “On the flip side of everything we think we absolutely understand lurks an equal amount of the unknown. Understanding is but the sum of our misunderstandings. In the world we live in, what we know and what we don’t know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion”.  

Here at Jakarta Urban Blog there are many of things to see and do.  Look for a new review of Helmond and Michiels Jakarta Megalopis: Horizontal and Verticle Observations and new edits to Selamat Jakarta.

Jakarta (all talk, no action say Indonesians)

Who is one to talk anyway?  And there has been much talk about the recent floods in Jakarta being caused by “global warming”.  No doubt that, in part, they are.  But Jakarta has had from its very beginnings a flood problem.  Jakarta was built on the low delta of the Ciliwung River (which, I am sure,  flooded from time to time in the natural course of events) which the Dutch would later divert into canals to protect their own exclusive neighborhoods from being inundated.  Of course this would reek havoc in the urban kampungs from that day to this.  The city is sinking into the swampy ground, the mangrove forests have been altered and removed, and fill dumped into the Java sea to make more land area available for development along the north Jakarta coast.  Still, the Indonesians have their point…

All talk, no action say Indonesians

Mark Forbes, Nusa Dua, The AgeDecember 7, 2007


INDONESIA has hit out at developed countries for presenting “empty propaganda” during climate change talks in Bali and stalling proposals to pay to protect the world’s forests.The head of the Indonesian delegation, Emil Salim, launched the attack on the same day Indonesia released a proposal to reduce its emissions from forestry, which account for about 8% of the world’s greenhouse emissions. ”When it comes to the negotiating table here in Bali, they only come with promises,” Mr Salim said. ….> read full article here


Then again nothing is as strait forward as it may seem… and while I do not want to stray too far from my theme of Jakarta, this article from the Telegraph is well worth the look. After all everything is connected to everything else… 

BOG barons: Indonesia’s carbon catatrophe

Fred Pearce,  Telegraph, December 8, 2007

The continued destruction of peatland forests will greatly accelerate climate change.

I am standing in the heart of the world’s second largest tropical peat swamp, the Kampar bog in central Sumatra, watching the swamp’s water drain away along a small canal.

Across the western side of the bog there are dozens more drains. The peat bog is bleeding to death before me.Until five years ago, Kampar was a true bog with water at the surface, and it was covered by a rich rainforest in which Sumatran tigers roamed. A huge dome of peat, up to 15 metres deep, had built up over the past 6,000 years as woody debris fell into the swamp. It contains several billion tonnes of carbon.Now this part of the Kampar bog has been clear-felled, and the canals have been installed to turn it into plantations. As water levels fall beneath the blackened and treeless wasteland, the peat is drying and decomposing, releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per square kilometre than do many cities. ….> read full article here

Jakarta (banjir)

Flooding in North Jarkart has been going on since the Dutch built all those canals in old Batavia.  They are as predictable as clockwork and today is no exception as The Jakarta Post reports :

Flights were delayed, thousands of passengers were left stranded and the toll road to and from the airport was impassable as floodwaters from the sea off North Jakarta inundated parts of the city Monday.

An ignored warning of a cyclical high tide and a neglected sea barrier, which broke over a week ago, contributed to the congestion and confusion at the Soekarno-Hatta international airport.

Floodwaters submerged Pluit and Penjaringan subdistricts, disrupting traffic and forcing residents to flee their homes in North Jakarta’s coastal areas.

Traffic was paralyzed with congestion stretching from the Soekarno-Hatta tollgate to Slipi in Central Jakarta at around 8 p.m.

Adisti Sukma Sawitri, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta