A city is only as clean as its people allow it to be, no matter how hard the local government tries to beautify it.
That is what Bandung Mayor Ridwan Kamil found out recently, much to his great frustration. Kamil, who is famous for using social media to communicate with Bandung’s netizens, posted this on Instagram yesterday:
Kamil regrammed a netizen’s photo showing a sidewalk on the famous Dago entertainment district in Bandung having been littered. While littered sidewalks is a common sight in Indonesia, it was Kamil’s caption for the photo that really caught people’s attention:
“To all you #KelasMenengahNgehe who get to enjoy Dago’s new sidewalk but littered on it like this – this is a message from us: Middle finger salute.”
Many commenters of the photo praised Kamil for showing that he is passionate about his city, with the post having amassed over 130 thousand likes at the time of writing. However, some also criticized him for using such a rude gesture to get his point across.
As for us, we’re not sure why Kamil blamed the littering on the “kelas menengah ngehe” (awful/spoiled middle class) since it’s not known who actually did the littering.
But we totally understand Kamil’s resorting to virtually flipping the bird out of sheer frustration at those who like to ruin perfectly good things. After all, we’re of the opinion that outspoken (and sometimes rude) leaders who actually get things done are preferable over “polite” leaders who do nothing (or worse, profit off their position).
