Jakarta!

Just a few days ago (June 22, to be exact) Jakarta celebrated its 483rd anniversary. Netizens took to Twitter and Facebook to share their love for the city. The media ran articles about Jakarta’s history and rapid development. Local shopping centers joined the party by taking part in the Jakarta Great Sale Festival. Last and as usual, poorly-designed and easily-misunderstood banners by the city council are flown all over the city.

In written media, the attitude towards Jakarta can always be simplified into a sentence: ‘Despite its frustrating <insert negative points here>, Jakarta is a wonderful city because it <insert positive points here>’. Popular negatives include traffic jam, pollution, lack of green areas, and atmosphere of utter chaos; on the other hand, the positives center on how Jakarta is growing very rapidly and how Jakartans generally have more fun than their neighbours across the strait. (We got Beyonce a few years ago because some wacky Malaysians thought she was too entertaining to do a show there.) But this is not news.

What actually stole my attention was the banners. White background with green design. Green, green, green. Everybody’s going green. The Governor’s smile graced the banners and beside his face, a sentence along the line of “with our diversity, let’s make Jakarta an environment-friendly service city" bravely expresses its designer’s confusion. And we say, “WHAT?”.

Living in an environment-friendly sustainable city is every citizen’s dream, and changing Jakarta into one is our responsibility. In fact, most Jakartans I know are currently trying to reduce their negative impact on the environment. For example, plastic bags are beginning to lose favor and the Bike-to-Work community is thriving. I, along with many friends, actively choose to reduce our paper use by going paperless as often as possible and printing on both sides of the paper.

However, I still cannot make any sense of the banner. First and foremost, its green theme suddenly popped in without prior brouhaha. While Jakarta has been known by many names, I have never heard anything so defiant like ‘Green’. The lack of empty campaign is quite surprising actually, because if you need to get a lot of mouth (and no action) on an issue, you can always rely on Indonesia’s government. Perhaps they are not trying hard enough to fool us.

Next, what on Earth is a service city? A city that provides real public service so that its citizens can achieve high quality of life? Definitely not Jakarta. Just take one example. Applying for a Jakarta-issued national identity card can take as long as waiting for the Halley comet – and as expensive as lunch for ten people.

Ultimately, it is a sign of pure ignorance and shamelessness to put up such banner. The go-green motivation is noble, but when we put that banner in Jakarta’s context, it is just sad. As the world proceeds to embrace more advanced green-living principles, Jakarta consistently fails in fulfilling the basics.

Just another example, flooding is a common complication of rain in the city, and when traced, it comes back to people who throw away their thrash to the streets or into the rivers. In addition, the city government neglected their duty to regulate the development of gigantic, green-space consuming multi-use shopping centers.

At the end of the day, I can only sigh with shame. I love Jakarta. I have tasted the cities of Europe, America, and Australia, but I have always foolishly said Jakarta is better. As the years pass, it takes more and more effort to do declare my unconditional love for the city. But, finally, I can only say “Happy Birthday My Dear Jakarta”.