JAKARTA UNDER WATER

On the first day of February 2008, flash floods again submerge some parts of Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, the host country of the UNFCCC in Bali last December. Dozens of flights at the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport are to be delayed. Some passenger aircrafts should return to their home airports due to the poor visibility. The airport’s toll road is inundated by the flood so that not even trucks can pass. What a shame! Jakarta is the main gate of Indonesia. It is like the barometer of this country for foreigners. But, the city, which is the home of more than nine million people and central government, is again paralyzed by the routine flash floods. Once again, the irresponsible government officials blame the natural phenomenon, like what a so called “climate change”, as the cause of this “disaster” to conceal their incapability. Every Jakartans know well about this bad attitude of certain officials. In fact, the flash floods come and go as they like. No matter how long heavy rains fall in the city, many parts become submerged. Vice President Jusuf Kalla had pledged that Jakarta would no longer be under flood water in 2008, but the fact shows a difference. When is Jakarta free from being a city under water? This time, as a nation, we are again warned of the importance of learning history and reviving the religious teachings in our lives. In Islam, we are taught and ordered to be clean spiritually and physically. We are also taught about the worthiness of history as our means to build our future without repeating the same mistakes that other people or our own ancestors had ever made. In this case, we are to be more serious to teach ourselves and our young generations about the history of Jakarta and places where we are living. We are cursed by our own negligence to our history, the wisdoms of our ancestors and even our colonizer, the Netherlands.