Analysis: New capital Nusantara put to popular test

At least one political party has picked up the issue in its election campaign, which kicked off on Oct. 28, saying that the project, a signature of the incumbent President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, should be shelved by the next elected president and government.

The project has already been assured political legitimacy through the 2022 law on the Nusantara Capital (IKN) passed by the House of Representatives. Some construction has started on the once-forested land, entirely funded from the government’s budget. Many foreign and domestic private investors have pledged to participate, but none have spent any money. They are waiting for the election results, and for the next government to decide on the future of the new capital.

It has never been clear, however, whether the new capital city project has popular legitimacy. That the project got the House endorsement was more a reflection of the power that Jokowi had over the political parties that were part of his coalition government. The Islamist Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) was the lone party out of nine in the House that did not endorse the bill when it was put to a vote in January 2022. In October this year, the project was put to another vote in the House for the bill amending some articles of the IKN Law. Again, the PKS was the odd man out in rejecting the proposal.

The PKS is now taking the Nusantara project before the people for a popularity test, promising that if it won the election, it would send the IKN Law back to the House to be repealed. The PKS came sixth in the 2019 legislative election, polling 8.21 per cent of the total national votes. Now it is hoping to capture the silent voices that had privately rejected moving the capital to increase its share of the votes.

The PKS is in a coalition with the NasDem Party and the Nation Awakening Party (PKB) in nominating former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan for president, who is pairing with PKB chairman Muhaimin Iskandar as running mate. The presidential and legislative elections will be simultaneously held on Feb. 14, so the fate of the parties and candidates are somehow bound together.

Anies has been careful not to pick up the theme in his election campaign, saying that if elected as president, he would abide by the law, but he did not rule out the possibility of bringing the project to the House for revision. The PKB and NasDem, which 2019 came fourth and fifth respectively, have refrained from taking up the issue in their election campaigns since they voted for the IKN bill both times, when it was endorsed and when it was amended.

Just exactly how popular or unpopular the new capital project is is not clear. It will be one of the legacies that Jokowi hopes to leave after he finishes his time in office in October. The project not only comes with a huge price tag, but it will be some 20 years or more, and several presidents before construction is completed and all central government workers move.

What’s more

Jokowi, who picked the name Nusantara (meaning archipelago) for the name of the capital city, envisions that it will be fully operational in 2045 when Indonesia celebrates its 100th independence anniversary. 

The government is recruiting the first few hundred civil servants to send to Nusantara to start working in whatever construction it has this year. Jokowi hopes to celebrate Independence Day on Aug. 17 there, his last as President.

Jakarta's acting governor Heru Budi Hartono, a Jokowi appointee, surprisingly did a great disservice to the Nusantara image by portraying the city as a dumping place for bad civil servants. Heru said he would send non-performing employees in the city administration to the new capital unless they pulled up their socks. Heru was speaking out of turn since the staff of the Jakarta administration are not employees of the central government. His statement reflects the sentiments many government workers must feel about Nusantara. When you are sent there, you are essentially doomed.

Jokowi pulled all the stops available at his disposal in making his plan to relocate the capital a reality. He argued that Jakarta was rapidly sinking caused of overpopulation, making it vulnerable to floods. He also argued that moving the seat of the government to East Kalimantan would address the accusation that the government is too Java-centric, at the expense of the eastern part of the country. The western part of Indonesia is admittedly more developed than the east.

Jokowi launched the initiative to move the capital in 2019 and the House only needed five months of deliberation to come up with the IKN Law. The whole project was delayed by more than two years by the Covid-19 pandemic and construction only began in 2022.

Repealing the IKN Law hinges on whether the next president will have the majority votes in the House. Cancelling the project altogether can be costly. The next elected government will have to calculate which is the more expensive: continuing the project, or shelving it altogether.

President Jokowi knows too well about cancelling a megaproject of his predecessor.

When he came to office in 2014, one of the first things he did was to scrap the Java-Sumatra bridge project, a signature of his predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. The bridge plan was already in place, including the financing package from China, and some land clearance had been carried out on both islands to connect the bridge. However since there was no construction, it was easy for Jokowi to cancel the project altogether, arguing that the bridge would kill thousands of jobs in the business of ferrying people and goods between the two islands. He made good on his election promise.

What we’ve heard

A source in the Anies Baswedan campaign team said the pair of Anies and Muhaimin Iskandar will postpone the new capital city project, Nusantara if elected. The source said the project is not a priority for the pair and has proven to be damaging to the forests in East Kalimantan.

Despite the postponement, according to the source, Anies would not completely halt the Nusantara Capital infrastructure development. If elected, Anies will reallocate the budget to develop cities surrounding Nusantara and regions across Kalimantan. Anies's team the budget would be spent on building schools, hospitals, and other public facilities. "Everything will be reassessed," said the source.

The source said Anies indeed raised his opposition to the capital relocation to attract voters. The campaign team believes some voters reject the Nusantara capital city project.

Meanwhile, the other two pairs, Prabowo Subianto and Ganjar Pranowo, will continue the development of Nusantara. A member of Ganjar's expert team stated that the support system for Jakarta and Java in general is no longer ideal. "Air pollution and traffic jams make Jakarta no longer ideal to be the capital," said a source.

Prabowo's camp will also continue the development of the Nusantara. A politician in Prabowo's campaign team said if elected Prabowo would increase the budget to accelerate the development of Nusantara city.

Tenggara Strategics

The Jakarta Post

Asia News Network