Today is the first time in just over two years that Jakarta has faced major, widespread flooding. While it’s long been a huge problem affecting the capital, flooding has taken a backseat to other issues during this year’s election campaign,with other topics such as religion, and, uhm, defamation of religion, playing a much bigger role in debates over the different candidates.
But after today, it’s pretty clear that flood prevention will become a major issue in the runoff election between Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama and his rival Anies Baswedan on April 19.
It’s also a point of extreme contrast between the two candidates, as Ahok has made flood prevention one of his major policy focuses during his time as governor while Anies says the current administration has failed and that he would take a very different approach.
To Anies’ credit, he said that today was not a time for playing the blame game and instead asked volunteers to focus on helping flood victims. However, just yesterday, when he was visiting an area of Cipinang Melayu in East Jakarta (which was already flooded even then) he said Ahok’s administration had been unsuccessful in their flood mitigation efforts in the area.
Mas @aniesbaswedan Anies menijau lokasi banjir di Cipinang Melayu, Makasar, Jakarta Timur. pic.twitter.com/eNGW2W3sPX
— Partai Gerindra (@Gerindra) February 20, 2017
“This has to be immediately addressed. The current program must be well-executed,” Anies said as quoted by Tempo.Anies said one of the problems was that Ahok did not put enough focus on increasing ground absorption to prevent flooding.
“Absorption is important. If the plan isn’t implemented, then [river] normalization won’t be effective. And if it isn’t effective, the program will fail, like it is doing right now,” Anies said.
Anies has often suggested “vertical drainage” as an alternative solution to Jakarta’s flooding (meaning the creation of more absorption wells to channel water into the ground), in addition to prevention of upstream flooding (from places outside of Jakarta) and building more reservoirs. He’s also nebulously suggested that the flooding problem is complicated and different in each area of the Jakarta, so his administration would come up with specific solutions for each area, later,
One solution that Anies has shown very little support for is normalizing Jakarta’s rivers, which has been at the centerpiece of Ahok’s flood mitigation strategy. It’s also one of the governor’s most criticized policies, since it has involved relocating (or evicting, if you prefer) thousands of poor people from their settlements along the river banks to low-cost government housing. Anies has repeated promised that he would not do more evictions.
https://www.facebook.com/AhokBTP/photos/a.193200707366298.46998.180432571976445/1408827245803632/?type=3&theater
Ahok, who often talks about the promise he made to rid Jakarta of flooding, was quick to respond to Anies’ criticism saying yesterday that there simply was no other realistic solution to the problem besides normalizing the rivers. And, according to Ahok, if Anies really understood the problem, he’d realize that.
“If Pak Anies, by the grace of God, becomes the governor of Jakarta, and he [says] doesn’t do normalization like I have been doing, then he’s a liar,” Ahok said in Bukit Duri on Monday as quoted by Kompas.
“Whoever becomes governor, if he does not do the normalization, then he is definitely not doing his job. You choose the flooding, or you choose normalisation.”
Ahok said that was not just his opinion, but that of the Central Government and the Public Works Ministry, which have been studying the problem for a long time and have concluded that normalization in the only hope for Jakarta.
As bad as today’s flooding was, it could have been much worse. According to Ahok, the river normalization program carried out so far has reduced the number of flood-prone areas in Jakarta from 2,200 in 2012 to just 80 in 2016.
“The math is simple: by reducing the number of [flood prone areas] from 2,000 to 80, I have already been successful,” Ahok said.
https://www.facebook.com/jktbisa/photos/p.1802846213288707/1802846213288707/?type=1&opaqueCursor=AbrQ5MWCHmHHI4Zi3l6IwNezvZ2vEdAQGMXGlWmyaq-SbjGCChTiKoAnfXfjdVC65Ng-kf1Kv-Er-ReZ4zxACu3vz65LJoHlqDndHXxjoJplx36wa-6KT9bdvBKBHegQ2wcpWnecgBhKE41y_hw9AdwayEJGX3i0xE5yknXGDr0Yw8UgXSWWO9SNNIH4KtxqhERO7oph-egM4vW_sGbUzFcCOn1h3ll99rCehHO7I9mSjqtPOAm6TfaJ5c78WUzFMx7nyncmTOT2MCQ2S042W2KL9PVvDvhQby-TYjFpL4Zahd6e41h1sfMUBzDPTEtbkTPWzplA_gZS77EVYO4ZEgWHrPDnViV-ehaeXxx5ZwwWzw&theater
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