Jakarta’s Flood: Monument to National Embarrassment

Over the past week, as I watch and read the news of Jakarta’s flood, I couldn’t help feeling helpless and hopeless for this country. First it’s the reactions of the victims, and second it’s the reactions of the governments.

Most of the victims, rather than getting very angry towards the government for not taking responsibility of the flood, are pasrah - accepting with a sense of helplessness and waiting for help to come. The second majority are the opportunists, who, rather than helping the victims, are taking advantage of the situation to get extra income. Within this opportunists group are those who help the victims in order to get media exposure for political or commercial. And the minorities (in comparison with the population) are those who try to help themselves and help others for humanity’s sake.

I’m hoping these are simply because the immensity of the disaster is such that delayed reactions could only be expected. Or perhaps the media coverage simply has focused on the more appealing part of the events.

Then it’s the reactions of the governments, who literally ‘blame it on the rain’ and/or on other departments, onto which they have no control over. Sure, who would want to risk losing their political seats when they can get away without doing so. By them my deepest despair is caused.

At least the central government now seems to have plans in the forms of offering transmigration and public housing for the poor. Despite the fact that transmigration and public housing have been highly criticized due the more problems they caused rather than solved, the plans show some kind of political will in solving the problem. But why they keep doing things that don’t work is beyond my understanding.

The complexity of the problem – ranging from management of land zoning and development, control of environmental issues, waste and drainage management, planning and building regulations – from regional to neighborhood scale, need long term and integrated planning that can’t be solved by simply moving people away from the city. If anything could be learned by the government from this disaster is that they should no longer take shortcuts in solving the problem.