JAKARTA - Fast economic
growth and rural-to-urban migration are straining
Indonesia's congested capital, reviving official
talk that the country's administrative center
would be better placed in a peripheral location.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has voiced his
support for such a move, giving the periodically
revisited idea fresh impetus while the country
surges ahead economically.
Coastal Jakarta
is more populated than ever, with more than 13
million people. That's up from a population of 10
million in 1998 and less than one million before
the country gained independence from colonial rule
in 1945. Tortuous traffic jams, creaky
infrastructure and ever rising levels of pollution
in Jakarta are restraining significantly the
country's trade and investment potential.
New motor vehicle registrations are up
recently around 10% per
year while urban planners are
paving new roads at a lagging 1%-2% per annum.
Poor public transport systems, meanwhile, are
forcing the country's fast growing middle class to
purchase automobiles more out of necessity rather
than prestige. Bottlenecks in Jakarta cost the
country as much as 5.7 trillion rupiah (US$670
million) per year in wasted fuel costs alone.
Pollution-related public health bills push that
cost higher.
According to Indonesia 2033
Vision Team, a group of experts from the
University of Indonesia researching different
scenarios for moving the capital, locations on
Kalimantan island have the best prospects. The
expert group contends that a Kalimantan-situated
capital would allow for more sustainable economic
development, create a strategic epicenter for the
archipelago nation and help to stop the
overwhelming migration from underdeveloped regions
to Jakarta.
The working group estimates a
move to Kalimantan that was commenced relatively
soon and completed over a five-year period would
cost the country around 50 trillion rupiah. Such a
move would entail building up basic
infrastructure, including electricity, ports and
government offices, as well as constructing homes
for an estimated 400,000 civil servants, according
to the group's projection.
If instead the
move's time-line was extended over a 10-year
horizon the cost would rise to around 100 trillion
rupiah, a sum the expert group considers
financially feasible considering that the annual
national budget is currently allocated at around 1
quadrillion rupiah. The group's experts predict
the move would simultaneously boost revenues and
the national economy through increased travel to
the new city.
Yudhoyono, twice popularly
elected, has by some analyst estimates enough
political capital at his disposal to push through
such a high cost move. He has outlined his vision
for Indonesia to become a ''BRIC'' economy by
2020, a plan many foreign analysts view as
achievable. A new capital, the analysts say, would
showcase nicely the country's higher economic
status and cement Yudhoyono's legacy as an
economic reformer.
Designs to move the
capital, a legacy of short-sighted urban planning
during Dutch colonial rule, were first mooted as
far back as the 1950s. Then president and
independence hero Sukarno proposed the capital be
moved to Palangkaraya, now the capital of Central
Kalimantan province. Sukarno's plan aimed to unite
the country's diverse ethnic groups, lessen the
country's economic dependence on Java island and
concentrate political power at the country's
natural geographic center.
His unifying
ambition stalled due to a lack of resources and
the burdens of building for the Asian Games and
Games of New Emerging Forces, a short-lived
counter to the Olympic Games for socialist states,
which were both held in Jakarta in 1962.
President Suharto later revived the idea
in the 1990s when he proposed to move the capital
to Jonggol, an area 50 kilometers south of
Jakarta. His ambition was upended by the 1997-98
Asian financial crisis, which depleted the
national coffers and sent the economy into a
downward tailspin, and the subsequent reformasi
protests that drove him from power after 32 years
of strongman rule.
With the national
finances now largely restored, Sukarno's and
Suharto's proposed cities, Palangkaraya and
Jonggol, are still candidates for the move. So are
two cities in Kalimantan, namely the westerly
Pontianak, which is strategically located near
shipping and financial hub Singapore, and the
southerly Banjarmasin, which is well-served by
maritime traffic in the Java Sea.
Policymakers are reportedly looking
towards other country examples for guidance.
Uprooting the capital from Jakarta to Kalimantan
would follow in Brazil's radical footsteps when it
moved government offices in Rio de Janeiro to the
newly created Brasilia in 1960. The move allowed
Brazil to populate and develop a previously
impoverished region and design a city from scratch
to achieve fluid traffic flows.
Relocating
the capital to nearby Jonggol, on the other hand,
would be more akin to Malaysia's first phase move
from Kuala Lumpur to Putrajaya in 1999. The
Malaysian government aimed to build an
''intelligent city'' where 40% of the land is
reserved for greenery. A high-speed rail connects
downtown Kuala Lumpur to Putrajaya, which is less
crowded and more eco-friendly than the old
capital.
From a construction and cost
standpoint, massive improvements to Jakarta's
failing infrastructure would be the easiest but
potentially least effective option. Current plans
won't be enough to bridge the gap: a monorail
system scheduled to open in Jakarta in 2016 will
only serve the city center and consist of a mere
one-kilometer of track. Designated express lanes
for buses and other high-occupancy vehicles have
been impossible to enforce and had little impact
on the city's legendary traffic jams.
Suharto's vision of a capital at Jonggol
appears to balance the need for a new city with
the practical and financial limitations of
relocating the entire government to a distant new
location. However, Jonggol land has recently been
swallowed up by speculators, causing prices to
skyrocket and raising new questions about the
plan's economic viability. Powerful parliamentary
factions are known to have divergent interests in
which geography is chosen, meaning there is a
political chance a new Indonesian capital is built
for the wrong and potentially corrupt reasons.
Jacob Zenn graduated from
Georgetown Law in 2011 and is currently based in
East Java, Indonesia.
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