Jakarta in Post-Suharto Indonesia: Decentralisation, Neo-liberalism and Global City Aspiration

Abstract

In this paper, an examination is made of Jakarta's changing political and economic position since the mid 1990s. This period of transformation is dealt with in four parts: the first relates to spatial and administrative changes to Jakarta and its wider urban region; the second considers the impact and implications of the 1997 Asian financial crisis (krismon) and ensuing political transformation which saw the resignation of President Suharto; the third part details the decentralisation laws of 1999 and their implications for urban and regional development; and the fourth considers the context of the 2008–10 global financial crisis (krisis global) in which ‘neo-liberalisme’ became a political slur in Indonesia, ironically at the same time as the governor of Jakarta declared ‘global city’ aspirations.

Acknowledgements

A first draft of this paper was presented at the International Symposium on ‘Making Global City and the World Economic Crisis’, Shenzhen, China, 4–8 January 2010. The authors are grateful to the Peking University Graduate School for funding attendance at that event. They also gratefully acknowledge helpful comments from the anonymous referees as well as editorial guidance from Ronan Paddison.

Notes

It is worth noting that, although disaffected regions often mistakenly conflated Java (and the Javanese ethnic group) with Jakarta in airing their grievances about centralisation under the New Order regime, parts of the island of Java (including within the city of Jakarta itself) experienced, and continue to experience, amongst the highest poverty levels nation-wide.

It should, however, be noted that Jakarta is a city which has given rise to some of the very kinds of urban ethnography through which such insights could be tapped (see, for example, Jellinek, 1991; Murray, 1991).

Nobody knows for certain how many poor people live in Jakarta and poverty ‘guesstimates’ vary tremendously according to how poverty is defined, where the boundaries of Jakarta are drawn (i.e. to include only JMA or satellite towns) and between official and unofficial figures. For instance, Indonesia's Central Bureau of Statistics (Badan Pusat Statistik, BPS) states that 3.62 per cent of Jakarta's population live below the poverty line and defines poverty as those who are unable to afford basic food items to the value of Rp2100 per day and those who are unable to afford essential household items, schooling and housing (BPS, 2009). However, many NGOs criticise the BPS statistics for being too low and cite higher poverty levels of about 13 per cent (see, for example, McCarthy, 2003, pp. 195–228).

Rather than seeing the gatehouses (gardu) that feature in private-sector residential developments as merely a symptom of a recent global urban form associated with the rise of disciplinary society and gated communities world-wide, for example, Kusno (2010, p. 20) reflects on the gardu “as an institution that embodies specific histories and has over time shaped the collective memories of people who lived through those histories”.

As Abidin Kusno (2010, p. 5) has put it recently, “Indonesians today remember a decade since the fall of President Suharto (1966–98). However, no one seems sure how different the present era is in comparison with the previous one”.

However, it should be noted that there had been some prior experiments with limited decentralisation (see, for example, Miller, 2004; Turner et al., 2003).

However, it should be noted that national policy shifts especially since 2004 have sought to ‘revitalise’ the role of provincial governments in overseeing and co-ordinating their constituent districts (interview with I Made Suwandi, Director of Regional Autonomy, Ministry of Home Affairs, 15 January 2008).

Attempts to deal with such problems must also be noted. These include debates in the Home Affairs Ministry and Bappenas concerning new laws to deal with common externalities (interview with I Made Suwandi, 2 December 2009).

Interview with I Made Suwandi, 2 December 2009.

Interview with I Made Suwandi, 15 January 2008.

As the Executive Director of Regional Autonomy Watch (Komite Pemantauan Pelaksanaan Otonomi Daerah) put it For the long term we are quite optimistic … in terms of the future of Indonesia I am quite optimistic for the decentralisation and one of the future of Indonesia is also inter-regional co-operation. To expect best practices in the central level is quite difficult but to expect best practices to be implemented from the local government it's quite manageable actually so we try to develop optimism by developing this country from the region (interview with P. Agung Pambudhi, 11 December 2007).

And Mietzner (2009) even notes reduction in poverty figures during this period.

See, for example: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/sbys-platform-a-neoliberal-manifesto-critics-say-as-name-calling-continues/276709.

Interview, 30 November 2009.

See: http://www.citymayors.com/mayors/jakarta-mayor.html.