President Joko Widodo officially inaugurated Bambang Susantono as the head of the Indonesian Capital City Authority (IKN) and Dhony Rahajoe as his deputy at the State Palace, Jakarta, Thursday (10/3).
On that occasion, the president dictated the oaths of office for the two new officials. “I swear that I will fulfill my obligations as the Head and Deputy Head of the Archipelago Capital Authority in the best possible way and fairly, uphold the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia, and carry out all laws and regulations as straight as possible. and serve the community, homeland and nation,” said the president.
After being inaugurated, Bambang stated that he targeted IKN to become an inclusive, green, smart and sustainable city for all groups or “city for all“. He emphasized that it would take at least 20 years to build a new capital city.
“To build a city properly it certainly takes 15-20 years so that the city really has a spirit or soul of the cityand we build a city not only to build its physical but mainly is how social cohesion is, how is the interaction between its citizens, how the city will really become a livable city, humanist and liveable,” said Bambang.
Bambang also asked for the support of all parties so that the development of the IKN could run smoothly and reflect the archipelago which is thick with very high local wisdom.
The President, said Bambang, also hopes that this IKN will become a city that can reflect Indonesian cities in the future.
“One of the orders from the president was that the city had to build a new civilization. He wants this city to be a model city, which is not only for Indonesia, but also if possible it’s a global city“explained Bambang.
Career Journey
Bambang is actually not a new person in the realm of government. He served as Deputy Minister of Transportation in the United Indonesia Cabinet II for the 2010-2014 period.
The man who was born on November 4, 1963 has also served as Deputy to the Coordinating Minister for the Economy in the Coordination of Infrastructure and Regional Development in 2007-2010.
After serving as Deputy Minister of Transportation, this graduate of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) became a vice president Asian Development Bank (ADB).
He admitted that Jokowi was asked to carry out this task two weeks ago. As of Wednesday (9/3), he officially left ADB.
“So we just arrived in Indonesia earlier this week and of course it takes time to study all the documents, and also at the same time we have to build an institution that is currently only the two of us. We have to build it so that it becomes an institution that capable who can run fast to build Nusantara City, of course, together with all stakeholders,” he explained.
Meanwhile, the name Dhony Rahajoe is quite capable in the property sector. He himself is listed as one of the high-ranking officials at Sinar Mas Land. Donny admitted that he was previously contacted by the Minister of State Secretary Patikno to discuss the development of the new capital city. He said the task was quite heavy.
“Just yesterday, Wednesday, there was an order that was asked by me to help make the construction of the Capital of the Archipelago successful. Since I was appointed personally, I have prepared my resignation from Sinar Mas, Sinar Mas Land, and related companies. So we will focus on carrying out this fairly or large task, which is very difficult,” said Donny.
Capital of Government or City of Investment?
City planning observer Nirwono Yoga said that the two people who will lead IKN are not the right people.
Judging from the career background of the two, he suspects that the reason behind the appointment of Bambang Susantono and Dhony Rahajoe is to attract investment from both domestic and foreign. According to him, this deviates from the initial goal of developing IKN as the capital city of the central government which should not involve commercialization.
The appointment of the two also emphasized that the government did not have sufficient budget to build a new government capital. In fact, the budget for building the core government area must come purely from the State Revenue and Expenditure Budget (APBN) and involve more components of the nation’s children.
“Dying away from the original goal. Because our initial goal was to move the Government Capital from Jakarta to the Archipelago. With that, it means that there are no commercial frills. This means that our finances are sufficient to build a government capital. So these two appointments emphasize that we don’t have enough money to build IKN. We make IKN as an investment. If it becomes an investment city, it automatically has to be a commercial city, it can’t be a government city,” he told VOA.
The next question that then arose after the appointment of the two figures was whether IKN would be purely the capital city of the government, or IKN which was surrounded by various commercializations and industries.
“With issues that develop about nickel mining, for example, continuing land conservation and so on, this will eventually become biased, and the picture is that with issues like this, the capital city of government in quotation marks is only the center of government but is surrounded by the left and right by industrial estates. , commercial areas, mining areas, and so on. I am worried that the capital will be there, but technically, it is surrounded by the interests of many industries, commercial in the end,” he concluded. [gi/ab]