Hi folks, do we have a treat for you this week. Look, we know Arteria Dahlan is a controversial politician who always manages to steal headlines ever since he was elected to the parliament but it’s really hard to resist talking about his ridiculous claims and situations. This week he somehow managed to grab two major coverage about himself.
Another big story this week is the new capital city in East Kalimantan which now has a name and a legislation that solidifies the move from Jakarta starting 2024. The process itself is estimated to take about 20 years with a big ceremony and celebration in 2045 on the country’s 100th anniversary.
Of course, there’s the usual Covid update which this week involves a controversial school policy from the government amid the rapid rise of cases.
This will be long so feel free to pause and finish reading it later.
The Arteria Hysteria
Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) lawmaker, Arteria Dahlan is in hot water this week after he insisted that the Attorney General’s Office should sack some random public prosecutor for speaking Sundanese (the local language spoken in West Java) during an official meeting.
The identity of the prosecutor is still a mystery as well as when and where the meeting took place. And it looks like only Arteria will know exactly who he was referring to.
Naturally, the Sundanese community lambasted Arteria’s statement. And what the heck is wrong with uttering a few Sundanese phrases during a meeting? They asked. Some members of the community also pointed out that people during that parliamentary hearing with the Attorney General sometimes used English phrases. You don’t see Arteria making comments about that, they opined.
In an ironic twist, Arteria was also guilty of speaking Sundanese during that very hearing, using the phrase “ujug-ujug” which means all of the sudden.
Even the West Java Governor criticized the statement, urging Arteria to apologize. Arteria brushed off his detractors by telling them to take it up to the House of Representatives Ethics Committee. He was clearly unapologetic. At least at first.
Arteria tried to defend his statement, saying that he doesn’t want the prosecutors’ office to be infiltrated by members of the Sunda Empire. He was of course referring to that cult-like organization which believed itself to be a sovereign state, with Australia and the two Koreas being among its 54 protectorates, and support from the likes of Jack Ma and Bill Gates.
The leader of the Sunda Empire, Rangga Sasana, said he was so insulted by Arteria’s statement that he went to the parliament to have a word with him. Despite his self proclaimed power and status, he didn’t make it past security.
Arteria did eventually apologize for the statement, but only after he was reprimanded by his party, the PDI-P. The apology did little to appease public outrage. PDI-P West Java is calling party leaders to remove him from office. Meanwhile, several demonstrations broke out in different West Java cities and regencies all calling for Arteria to be ousted from his position as a lawmaker. One protes in Subang descended into chaos.
You think that’s exhausting? That’s not all.
Amidst all this, the public was made aware that Arteria owns five cars which share the exact same license plate numbers which resemble those issued by the police force. How do we know that they belong to the same politician? Well, they each had a sticker which reads “www.arteriadahlanlawyers.co.id” on them. Who still writes “www” for their URLs? It’s 2022 FFS.
The five cars were all parked at the DPR’s parking lot and his excuse was that he is in the middle of renovating his house, so he needs a place to store them. What better place than the office parking lot, right?
Police initially confirmed that Arteria does have an officially issued police plates for one of his cars but it’s not for any of the five in the DPR parking lot. And then later they denied issuing them for Arteria. What?
Anyway, the cars now carry their normal civilian license plates, the police are launching an investigation into the while fiasco, and Arteria has not spoken publicly about the matter. BTW… you can go to jail for up to six years for using a forged license plate.
A Heck of a ‘Cron Job
Covid-19 is making a come back this week. In a big way. Monday saw 772 new cases but by the weekend the numbers had reached 3,205 on Saturday and 2,925 on Sunday. All of December we recorded 6,311 cases, and this month so far, with a whole week to go, we’re at 23,658, nearly 4x as many and with 1,161 omicron cases as per Saturday, just five weeks after the first cases were announced.
The government also confirmed two of the country’s first Omicron deaths, an unvaccinated male who got Omicron through local transmission and a vaccinated female with severe comorbidities who recently arrived from another country.
With such an increase, President Joko Widodo urged people not to travel abroad and for offices to allow workers to work from home. The government did not announce additional measures to curb international travel but they are speaking strongly against it. Minister Luhut said people should adhere to the call if they do not wish to die.
At the same time, the government is allowing people to perform the minor pilgrimage, umrah, to Saudi Arabia even after 87 people came back positive with 10 suspected omicron cases. As if it wasn’t a sign it was a bad idea, the day they departed was the day Malaysia suspended their umrah trips indefinitely after noticing that the majority of their imported cases were from Saudi Arabia.
At least the government did tighten requirements to enter public places. Visitors of shopping malls, public parks, and other locations must now be completely vaccinated before entering. Single shots aren’t good enough anymore.
Meanwhile, 43 schools in Jakarta had to be temporarily closed because a total of 72 students, teachers, and staff got Covid as of this week. Most have since reopened and Jakarta’s Deputy Governor insisted that because the infections average out to fewer than 2 per school, they must have happened elsewhere and that they are maintaining the policy of keeping schools open.
The Controversial Capital City
Oh, where do we start with this one?
The new capital city in East Kalimantan has a name already, and it’s Nusantara, which is an old Javanese term synonymous with archipelago and used to refer to the outer islands in ancient times.
The Minister for National Development Planning, Suharso Monoarfa, said the President was the one who named the upcoming city. He said there were about 80 names being considered, some of which apparently were Cakrawala Pura, Kertanegara, Negara Jaya, Nusantara Jaya, Nusa Karya, and Warna Pura.
Many people on social media pointed out that these few candidate names that were revealed carry Javanese undertones –which adds to the Javanese cultural hegemony that had been in place ever since Soeharto made himself president back in the 1960s– instead of finding or using a local Kalimantanese name.
On top of that, Nusantara is a name widely used in texts referring to or about Indonesia, at least domestically. Regionally, Nusantara is also a name used in Malay to refer to the entire island region of Southeast Asia. How’s that for confusion?
Malaysian geopolitical analyst and celebrated writer, Ayman Rashdan Wong, said that the naming of Indonesia’s new capital is a clear signal that Indonesia is telling the world that the country, especially the capital, is the center of the region. He also suggested that it will sink the older use of the word as future usage may primarily refer to the capital instead of the region, a move that can be understood as a major political coup over a traditionally shared term.
The parliament spent only 16 hours deliberating over the draft of the law for moving the capital city which was approved mere hours later. The law was only opposed by the Prosperous Justice Party who objected over the decision being taken while the nation remains in a pandemic-induced economic crisis.
Meanwhile, a major Australian media, 9 News, republished a CNN article with their own added graphic showing Jakarta as the old capital when it’s still the current one, at least until 2024, and located in Bali. Shows how little our southern neighbors regard Indonesia as a nation and reinforcing the view that Aussies really only care about Bali.
This is also the same media company whose morning news bulletin took a video of Indonesian adrenaline junkies in Kampar river West Sumatra and said it was footage from Tonga during the tsunami caused by the massive eruption of the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai volcano. Reuters even stepped in and fact checked after an Indian journalist also presented the video as from Tonga. The Indonesian video was recorded in December, more than a month prior to the Tongan eruption.
Anyway, the new capital will be a special administrative region just like Jakarta and headed by a Chief of the National State Capital Authority, who will be an unelected official. It is still not clear whether Jakarta will keep its special status once the move is completed, or if it will be absorbed to West Java or, God forbid, Banten.
There’s much more to say about the new capital but this edition is already a long one.
Quick Reads
Breaking Nuice with Ketawa Comedy Club
We held our first ever live comedy show on Thursday at Ketawa Comedy Club in Jakarta which was very well attended and received. In Breaking Nuice, standup comedians discuss and comment on the major news and stories of the week. As Mo Sidik said, we will have another show in the future.
The Bone Collector
The La Pawawoi Museum in Bone, South Sulawesi, reported that 95 percent of its contents stolen. However, a man named Andi Baso Bone, who claimed to be the rightful owner of the artifacts, disputed this, saying that they were simply relocated.
You see, Andi has been living at a house inside the museum compound for decades and the government recently ordered him to move. So he broke into the main building where the artifacts were stored and took them without the knowledge let alone consent of the museum, later claiming that they are private property belonging to his family. Police had located all of the stolen artifacts but they still can't decide if this is theft or not.
Bank Indonesia Ransomware
In another testament to just how bad our cyber security is, the Indonesian Central Bank has become a victim of ransomware. While the bank said no public service was disrupted, a trove of data had indeed been stolen. However, the National Signals and Cyber Agency said no critical data was taken.
Jogja Tourists Charged Rp350k for Parking
A photo went viral this week of a receipt which showed that a tourist group in Yogyakarta was charged with a Rp 350,000 bus parking fee for two hours. Since the whole thing went viral, police immediately went to investigate and found that the receipt was allegedly prepared by the bus crew and not the parking attendants and that the whole thing was a case of a mark up.
Yogyakarta Deputy Mayor Heroe Purwadi said there is nothing he could do since the incident took place at an illegal parking spot, not an official one. The Deputy Mayor was reported saying that he was going to report the uploader of the photo to the police for tarnishing Jogja’s image but later said that it was all a misunderstanding.