By: Ahmad Kurniawan )*
President Jokowi admitted that the Indonesian capital would be moved from Jakarta to one of the places in Kalimantan. He will make an official announcement about the planned capital city in August 2019.
Jokowi stressed that the government would not be in a hurry in relation to the relocation of the national capital, but he still wanted that the plan to relocate the capital as soon as possible was decided.
National Planning and Development Minister / Head of Bappenas Bambang PS Brodjonegoro said, Java is still too dominant for the Indonesian economy. The removal of the capital was also carried out to change the mindset from Jawasentris to Indonesiasentris.
Bambang also said that the removal of the country’s capital from Jakarta would be announced by the President. The location for moving the capital is on the island of Borneo. But he did not mention the name of the province.
As we all know, last May, Jokowi visited two places on the island of Kalimantan, which was considered as potential locations for the planned capital move. The two locations are Bukit Soeharto in Kutai Kartanegara Regency, East Kalimantan Province and Gunung Mas Regency, Central Kalimantan Province.
He also stressed that the relocation of the capital to Kalimantan must lead to the concept of an environmentally friendly forest city.
Bambang stated his reasoning that the concept of forest city was chosen to protect the New Capital City to be environmentally friendly, and coincidentally the island of Kalimantan was considered an area of the world’s forests.
To realize the concept of the Capital City Forest City does not mean having to make a park, but the intention is the number of trees planted and maintain conditions in the capital to remain green.
The development of green open space for the new capital itself, is still in the estimated cost of the project and physical financing The state capital is planned to be allocated as much as Rp 4 trillion from APBN funding sources, the PPP scheme (Government and Business Entity Cooperation), and the private sector through the utilization cooperation scheme. The total estimated cost of the project and physical financing for the removal of the nation’s own capital of Rp 466 trillion.
The relocation of the Indonesian capital outside of Java should have been done. This aims to reduce Jakarta’s increasing burden. Especially with the traffic jam in Jakarta, which is only a holiday on Eid, making the capital city have to move. In addition, the total losses caused by traffic congestion in Jakarta reached tens of trillions. This certainly is one of the driving forces for the government to formulate a capital transfer plan.
Another factor is certainly related to the problem of inequality. During this time, the economic center is still based in the Jakarta area and around the island of Java. Even though Indonesia is not only Java.
Moreover, 58% of economic turnover is in Java. The rest is shared in all regions outside Java. Even in Jabodetabek alone, economic turnover reaches one fifth or 20 percent. If the problem of inequality is not taken seriously, inequality will widen.
The discourse of moving the capital appears also based also on the burden of the island of Java which currently bears the burden and density of the population. In 2017, the total population in Java represented 60 percent of Indonesia’s remaining population divided into islands outside Java.
That much population certainly needs clean water and large food availability, while conservation areas, agricultural land and forest areas are decreasing.
University of Indonesia (UI) Urban Sociologist, Paulu Wirutomo, argues that if a city is approaching densities that are very dangerous to people’s lives, it is better to find a way of spreading so that a city can develop again. The most effective strategy of population distribution according to him is by relocating the capital city.
In this effort, the government certainly needs to learn from several countries that have succeeded in moving the location of their capital cities, such as Brazil, Vietnam, Malaysia.
The decision to move the Indonesian capital, of course, was not something that suddenly appeared without in-depth study. It is fitting for the entire community to support ideas that have been discussed since the era of the 1st President of RI Ir Soekarno, so that the development of the Indonesian state can be evenly distributed and eliminate the impression of Javanese centrists.
)* The writer is a political observer of politics