We may have been naïve in hoping that the 2017 Jakarta governor election was going to be contested in a respectable manner, as one happy selfie optimistically suggested. The campaigning period hasn’t officially started but candidates are already taking sly digs at each other.
One particular criticism that caught the public’s attention took place a few days ago, when gubernatorial candidate and former education minister Anies Baswedan said that the reason Jakarta’s rivers are now clean is because of former Governor Fauzi Bowo AKA Foke rather than current Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, who’s up for reelection in 2017.
“The river cleaning program was planned by Pak Fauzi Bowo in 2009, and he carried it out at the end of his administration [in 2012]. And then it was continued by Pak Jokowi. And now it’s being continued by Pak Basuki (Ahok) for the past 2 years,” Anies said last Friday, as quoted by Detik.
When asked about his response, Ahok said today that he’d let search engine Google clarify the facts regarding who should get credit for cleaning Jakarta’s rivers.
“If Pak Anies were more diligent, he could have Googled it. Someone sent something to me saying that if you type ‘Jakarta’s rivers are clean because of Foke’ [into Google’s search box] then Google will suggest ‘Did you mean Jakarta’s rivers are clean because of Ahok?’ That’s Google talking,” Ahok told reporters today, as quoted by Detik.
Ahok went on to clarify the facts further, saying that the normalization program of Jakarta’s rivers was part of the Jakarta Emergency Dredging Initiative (JEDI), which was devised by Foke’s predecessor, Sutiyoso.
“But who executed the plan? That’s what Pak Jokowi and I did. Jakarta doesn’t need programs or theories, we need execution and real action,” Ahok said.
We’d also like to add that much of the credit should go to the Santiation Agency’s Pasukan Oranye (Orange Troops), who are doing the actual dirty work of cleaning our waterways (with one of them tragically dying on the job recently). Check out these awesome photos of Jakarta’s rivers comparing what they were like before and after the Orange Troops got involved.
