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The car collision incident on Sunday (22/01) in Gambir, Central Jakarta was tragic. The driver, a 29-year old woman under the influence of drugs and alcohol, lost control of the car while speeding and subsequently killed nine pedestrians and critically injuring three others.

What happened afterwards, was even more worrisome. Curious minds and itchy fingers have made it possible to find the driver’s Twitter handle. Soon after, images of the driver allegedly doing drugs at a party the night before the crash was posted online. It was continuously retweeted and severe name calling, mockeries, and public hatred was targeted to her countless times.

I believe no crime should go unpunished, but what I have witnessed on my timeline was trial by Twitter, herd mentality at its finest.

It was a concerted effort to condemn drunk-driving, but the aggressive means was bullying in nature. Perhaps it was because alcohol and drug abuse a morally wrong behavior in supposedly religious Indonesia, though I did not see the same animosity towards corruption. Perhaps the persecutory movement was provoked by the lack of trust in Indonesia’s criminal justice system and the lack of protection for its citizens. Or perhaps, it was just society’s favorite pastime – witch-hunting – only that it does not involve pitchforks and torches this time around, but smartphones.

It is apparent that society hasn’t evolved much, and in a particularly reactive society, Twitter have made it possible to amplify any stereotypes you have in your head. It is easy to judge a person, a company, or a product, and Twitter just made it much easier.

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PR practitioners and political strategists are ultimately aware and make the best out of the Indonesian Twitter scene.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono have been criticized of too much image politics, but the blame shouldn’t entirely be put upon him. There’s a demand for image created by the public, and it becomes the matter of supplying the right commodity.

For instance, Mr. Gita Wirjawan, the Indonesian Trade Minister, was scrutinized over his ministry’s minimum TOEFL score policy, something that I see as a miniscule of importance compared to his rattan export-ban policy. The former policy was spun in the hopes of making him look like an elitist, while the latter has the tendency to be pro-domestic industry.

Another case would be Mr. Dahlan Iskan, the Indonesian State-Owned Enterprises Minister, supported by some as a presidential candidate for 2014, because he was humble enough to take a commuter train for a meeting despite any breakthrough policies in his ministry. It is sadly image above performance and this is the reality of civic awareness in Indonesia.

The presidential race is still two years ahead, but hopeful candidates have prepared themselves on precisely this image building process. Official, unofficial, and even anonymous Twitter accounts both supporting and countering the hopeful candidates have been set-up, in the hopes of gaining and swinging the votes of mostly urban and middle class Indonesians.

Granted, the bulk of many PR activities still need to be done outside social media, because many Indonesians don’t have access to electricity, let alone the internet. However, the middle class is still an important battle ground for votes and what better way to infiltrate the contest for best image through social media.

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On a personal level, I have been using Twitter as an interest-network tool. I follow people or accounts who I have similar interests with, whether it is about the environment, politics, current affairs, or comedy. I also follow my friends in real life whom I have real relationships with and interact with them online. Whether I am followed-back in return, it is not my main purpose although there’s no denying that the number of followers you have does create that false sense of achievement in your ego.

Recently I have done tweetups, or meeting in person the people you meet on Twitter. To be honest, at first it was indeed awkward because you feel you know them because of their tweets, but in fact, you don’t. As you engage in the conversation, you find out who the person behind the screen is, beyond of what is written in their timeline.

I would imagine that the process would be difficult for some if they’re projecting an image of who they are not. Are you as funny, smart, idealistic, cynical or delightful, as you would like them to think? Or was it an unintended consequence because people are easy to judge in the first place?

I’ve asked a high school best friend of mine of what she thinks about my online persona. Have I unconsciously projected an image of who I am not on Twitter, knowing that she knows me for who I am in person?

Her answer, much to my surprise, was that I might be more intimidating online than I am in real life. She then continued with a question, asking why I tweet what I tweet. My response was that I share what I find interesting online and since I am opinionated I tweet about it as well (although thankfully blogging has become a more satisfying outlet). In the process, however, I did not share “me”.

I did not share much about my hopes and dreams, my fears and insecurities, because I want to keep that in the realm of my privacy. I consciously intend to not give people whom I do not trust (online especially) the complete picture of me, fearing that it might hurt me in the future. Twitter, however, has conflated my private and public spheres and managing it is a tricky balance.

I could just keep my account protected, or stay out of it and deactivate my account, but it has so far given me more benefits than costs. What I’m struggling at the moment, is figuring out whether people’s false expectations of you based on what you tweet is more of a cost or benefit, because it can easily be swayed into both directions.

Perhaps Twitter is just another fad and people would soon grow out of it. No matter the form, however, this process of building the image of you would still be there.

Kompas and The Jakarta Post (18 January 2012)

On the left is a picture on the renovation of the DPR Budgetary Body room, how the newly imported chair from Germany each costs Rp. 24 million. On the right, is a picture of a damaged bridge in Lebak, Banten, used by children to go to school.

As usual, only after it has gotten national and international media coverage, seven days after the bridge was damaged the Bupati, Mr. Mulyadi Jayabaya, decides to visit the site and made an attempt to cross the bridge as well – only to find that he was not as fit as those children are.

The costs for repairing the bridge, he said, is roughly Rp. 600 million with the duration of 3 months.

The total costs for renovating the DPR Budgetary Body room is roughly Rp. 20 billion, and I’m pretty sure it will take less than 3 months to finish. I believe the honorary members of the representatives can’t wait to have its next meeting discussing future government spending in those comfortable chairs.

Oh well.

From the Jakarta Post:

In 2005, the government spent Rp 32.9 trillion on infrastructure development. This represented only 1.2 percent of the total gross domestic product that year. Six years later, the government spent Rp 141 trillion on infrastructure while the gross domestic product stood at Rp 6,840.4 trillion. This means that the ratio of infrastructure development in comparison to gross domestic product stood only at 2.1 percent in 2011

I met Akash Deep from HKS during a discussion in Jakarta, and his comments was that Indonesia spends too little on government spending. “Being conservative in consumption is good, but conservative on investment is not good,” he said. At 2.1 percent from GDP, below the ideal level of 5 percent, one wonders why the allocation was so little in the first place.

Well, an obvious answer was that the level of realization of the allocated budget is slow. How can you allocate more if you’re unable to spend what has been allocated in the first place? Data from LIPI (quoted from the linked article), as of September 2011 the budget utilization stood at only 30 percent.

Then you need to figure out why the disbursement of funding so slow…bureaucratic inefficiencies, regulatory holdups, corruption perhaps (or most likely).

If the government is not willing to spend on infrastructure, their strategy is to depend on the private sector through PPP. Thing is, even if Indonesia’s rating got another boost from Moody’s lately, if the weaknesses in Indonesia’s infrastructure investment environment is not fixed, the PPP strategy is unlikely to produce results in the speed that is needed.

Two of my research focus at the moment is on acceleration & due process of land acquisition in Indonesia, with the case study of the Jakarta MRT Project as well as on the Jabodetabek Transport Authority. So yes, I’ve been browsing through a lot of data and information on urban planning, urban transport, etc.

One document that I stumbled upon was a presentation for DPR made in 2007 from the Jakarta Government regarding transportation in Jakarta. Granted, the data is from 2007 and a lot of things may (or may not) develop. But based on that document alone, it is said that if the growth of private vehicle increases by 9.5%/year while the road space in Jakarta only increases by 0.01%/year, the traffic gridlock prediction will not happen in 2014, but in 2011.

Here’s some obvious reasons: there’s no limit on ownership of private vehicles, in addition to the fuel subsidy, which makes private transportation more desirable than public transportation (which lacked investment in the first place). As a result, from 2002-2008, the increase of car ownership doubles, while ownership of private motorcycle have increased by 4.6 times.

Source: Polda Metro Jaya

Since it’s already 2012, maybe the gridlock already happened, but we were just too oblivious to realize that it did.

Parking Attendants in Jakarta. Photo: VIVAnews/Maryadie

There was this one time when my former boss entertained some foreign guests at a restaurant in Jakarta. As the company car that we rode was going to leave the venue, one guest made a small comment, “Who are these terus-men, where do they come from?” Puzzled, we asked what he meant by terus-men. “You know, these people who go behind the back of your car out of nowhere and say, terus, terus, terus and ask you for parking money”.

The word terus in Bahasa Indonesia literally means continue. Those of us who are fortunate to own a car will know what this means every time we want to park, as some people (mostly men), officially or unofficially, will guide you in your parking routines saying “continue, continue”, “left, right”, and “stop” to indicate whether you have parked correctly.

If you’re parking on the streets, you will then immediately pay these parking attendants Rp.1000-2000 (US$ 0.10-0.20), or sometimes Rp.5000 in some places, regardless of how many hours that you’ve parked.

Even if you are parking off the streets, these parking attendants will still come and even if they do not ask for money, it is often common to still give them Rp.1000-2000, additional to your hourly parking fee. Thus, in some off-street parking places, whether it is malls or office buildings, you will see signs saying “no tips please” – which encourages car owners to not give tips to these parking attendants (or sometimes doubling their job as security guards) patrolling the area.

Though their tasks may seem trivial, these parking attendants actually depicts the bigger picture of the interaction between urban land use planning and transportation in the city.

Jakarta is increasingly becoming auto-centric, with private transportation (cars and motorcycles) being the preferred mode compared to Jakarta’s decaying public transportation. With the rise of private transportation, the demand for parking follows. At least this is the conventional way of seeing parking supply policy, because we see it as a scarcity issue.

In Indonesia, minimum parking requirements are regulated under Ministry of Public Works Regulation No. 29/PRT/M/2006 which regulates the technical requirements for buildings. Based on this regulation, buildings are compulsory to provide parking spaces proportionate to the floor area of the building, though they did not specify exactly what proportional means.

Regulations on parking is scattered in various laws in Indonesia. One can find parking regulations in the Traffic Law No. 22/2009, to even details on how to park your car on the street, whether it’s parallel, 30°, 60°, 90° complete with graphs (no kidding) in Ministry of Transportation Decree No. KM 4/1994.

In Jakarta, management for off-street parking can be delegated to the private sector, but the parking authority remains with the Jakarta government, managed by the Jakarta Parking Technical Implementation Unit (UPT Perparkiran DKI Jakarta). The parking tariff and the proceeds are determined by the local government, which goes to the local government revenue. Official on-street parking attendants wear uniforms and are supposed to hand out parking retribution slips, because the fee doesn’t go to them, but to the government. Whether they actually hand in those fees, well, we won’t know exactly.

The unofficial parking attendants are even more questionable. We don’t exactly know whether they work for the building/parking operators, or were they just idle men in the area and posing as parking attendants. It’s not exactly hard to say terus, terus, terus and people give you money in return. It is not uncommon for me to hear stories that people bicker over which “territory” they control over parking – even though the area might not be available for parking according to the land use regulations.

It is important for the Jakarta government to think about parking seriously. Even if there are minimum parking requirements, most are not implemented correctly, as I often see overcrowded on-street parking as a result which causes bottlenecks and traffic congestion. Often, buildings don’t have adequate parking because initially they were intended as private houses but are converted into restaurants and other commercial spaces – violating zoning regulations – which are common in Jakarta.

Parking spaces have costs and I would see that Rp.2000 per parking is underpriced, which does not discourage people from driving their cars or riding their own motorcycles and encourage people to use public transportation. I believe the main purpose for parking tariff is not for collecting revenue, but to manage supply and demand for private transportation. True, Jakarta’s public transportation is almost beyond help at this moment, but parking needs to be examined carefully as well as a tool to manage Jakarta’s urban planning and transportation.

Maybe if parking is better regulated and implemented, we won’t see these terus-men anymore. Perhaps parking in Jakarta would be automated, with machines replacing human labor. Or maybe because the thought of improvement in parking efficiency scares the people who are benefiting from the status quo, these changes are going to be very hard to make.

What are the things to look forward to? Foreign Policy curated twenty elections that could change the world in 2012. Jakarta will also hold its gubernatorial elections this year, though I doubt any significant changes will be made after the elections.

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North Korean official media announced the death of its leader, Kim Jong Il on 19 December 2011, two days after his actual dying day, which is on 17 December 2011. The death of this eccentric leader has raised concerns regarding several issues, including the future of Sino-North Korea relation.

China and North Korea has a mutual and strong relationship. North Korea has been considered as China’s buffer zone in Northeast Asia. While China, has been seen as North Korea’s main partner because of its immense support to North Korea by pumping aid to its poor economy.

The death of Kim Jong Il coincide with the shift of USA’s foreign policy paradigm toward Asia Pacific. As announced on November 2011, USA has established military cooperation with Australia by placing 2.500 US Marines in Darwin, Australia. USA’s action is seen as way to contend the spread of China’s influence in Asia Pacific, so that USA could preserve its hegemony in the region. In order to tackle this challenge, China needs to assemble support from any countries, especially its old ally, North Korea.

Having an ally that possesses strong military and nuclear power has given a great benefit for China. As China’s buffer zone in Northeast Asia, North Korea has shielded China from USA’s deterrence in forms of military presence in South Korea. USA’s military presence has disrupted the process of China’s reunification with Taiwan, since USA conducts arms trade with Taiwan. Therefore, a strong military ally is needed to guard the border of China from USA’s invasion.

However, after the death of Kim Jong Il, things will not be the same. North Korea’s military and nuclear power without strong leader may lead to instability that could involve the usage of nuclear. Besides, the instability may create mass panic and waves of refugees to China. Both instability and waves of refugees may distort the economic activity in China and the region, conditions that China can’t afford to have.

The heir of the dynasty is burdened on the shoulder of Kim Jong Un. As the third son of Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un has been prepared to take over the dynasty by receiving two important military titles: four star general and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission last year. Nevertheless, his relatively short groomed period which is 3 years (compared with his late father that has been groomed for two decades) makes it difficult for him to hold the approval of high ranking military officials regarding his leadership. Moreover, its gloomy economic condition could ignite social unrests or worse, though unlikely, the wave of demonstration by the people demanding a better economic situation. These factors could endanger Kim Jong Un’s leadership position, therefore the future of North Korea.

Hence, it is up to Kim Jong Un’s leadership to direct the future of Sino-North Korea relationship. If he can manage to lead the country by possessing approval from military side, the mutual and strong relationship would still be exist. However, if he fails to do so, Sino-North Korea story would be remembered as history. Which one is likely to be happened? Only time will tell.

To put things into context, Prof. Din Syamsuddin, the leader of Muhammadiyah, spoke in a Muhammadiyah gathering on Monday (19/12) stating that the year of 2011 is full of lies committed by state officials. He further claimed that the only way out is a “big bang” from the highest commander of this nation.

As a response, Mr. Marzuki Alie asked that the public should corner President SBY about government lies, because those lies actually happen in the local government level.

Though I disagree that those lies might not happen only in the local government level, but also in the central government level, what I second from Mr. Marzuki’s remarks is that “the government” consists of many levels, from the Regencies (Kabupaten), Cities, Provinces, and many other state institutions related with the implementation of governance. It is thus better to clarify what kind of “lies” that are meant by Prof. Syamsuddin, because when you say “government lies”, the government does not consist of a single party.

I believe in this situation the softer term for lies are undelivered performance. In order to measure the performance of government institutions, we must first clarify their mandate and scope of authority, their goals and timeline, and therefore those who did not manage to deliver are those who we can say are under-performing institutions. This should then be the public’s benchmark to differentiate those who’s worthy of our votes in the next round of elections and those who should be sacked (and even penalized if they’re involved in corruption).

Post-Reformasi, the presidential system and separation of powers doctrine that Indonesia adheres to truly materialized (though not perfect), making the powers of the President limited. The executive, led by the President, is no longer the authoritative institution because its powers are checked by the legislative (House of Representatives – DPR) and the judiciary. What was then centralized, are now decentralized, with local government heads (Governors, Mayors and Regents) directly elected by the people.

It is thus unfair if we were to judge the performance of SBY and the late Soeharto based on the “strongman” characteristics alone because how things are run in the past is obviously different than now. Maybe then, the President can fire any Governor, Mayor or Regent who is non-compliant, but it is not possible to do so in the current institutional arrangement in Indonesia.

Of course, SBY’s cabinet performance is also not perfect, with red marks still on human rights issues, corruption and infrastructure despite the rising economic growth. However, what needs to be understood by the general public is that there are changes in Indonesia’s state institutions, and if we were to give productive criticism and demand better performance from the government, we need to know where to direct our concerns rather than, quoting Mr. Marzuki again, shooting bullets in the air.

Being the head of DPR, I hope Mr. Marzuki also truly understood what he said – that these bullets might come to him – bearing in mind that DPR should also be the place where we direct our concerns, not the subject of it.

I understand why punk kids are seen as a public nuisance when it comes to busking on public trains and buses, and although not all of these punk kids do so, some even blatantly ask for money. What I disagree, however, is that if you put them on “moral reeducation” programs such as in Aceh, apprehending them without any legal basis.

h/t The Interpreter.

I first wrote about Ms. Nunun Nurbaeti in my blog here, ending with a bet for how long can she be on the run with the Interpol wanted list on her back. Turns out, I was way out of my initial bet of 10 days which turned out to be 6 months.

Tempo reported that she was on the loose for so long because she had some help from an international security firm based in Bangkok (the last place where she was captured). The whole protection (or rather, escape) scheme ran like an intelligence operation, led by a former US Marine, Mr. Philip B. Christensen. When asked about further information on Philip, Mr. Troy Pederson, the Press Attache of the US Embassy in Jakarta replied, “Sorry, our laws forbid it”.

Now that she’s back for questioning by the KPK, the whole story about her recurring memory loss is amusing:

Doctors at the National Police hospital, where Nunun was treated, recently confirmed claims voiced by her family that she was suffering from dementia, a condition where a person experiences a declining ability to memorize and think.

Funny, her disease didn’t seem to stop her socialite lifestyle and the ability to mix and match with the latest bags from Hermes and Birkin, and oh, those LV scarves. I’m guessing she didn’t seem to forget where to shop for those goods during her escapades in Singapore, Laos and Bangkok.

Nunun on her way to Jakarta after her capture in Bangkok, Thailand. Photography: TEMPO