Almost: Politically Saavy (Part 2b of 3)

My Indonesian friend Edder and I were coincidentally in Jakarta at the same time a few months before the 2024 Indonesian presidential elections. I had just finished a work project and had a day to kill. He had an entirely different mission in mind.

We left Edder’s hotel and zipped along Jakarta’s streets at first light. Our destination was Jakarta International Stadium (a.k.a. JIS), Jakarta’s modern stadium with a seating capacity of 85,000. The sun had barely risen but Edder was already worried that we would not be able to enter Anies’ rally. I was too preoccupied mentally collecting myself. What little brain function I scraped together concluded that he worried unnecessarily. Then we hit traffic.

~4 Kilometers from JIS

Jakarta is no stranger to traffic congestion. The city is famous for its gridlock. Jakarta serves as the political, economic, entertainment, and fashion hub for the nation. Ask any Indonesian to describe Jakarta in three or four words, and they will say (generally in this order), “hot, packed (dense), congested (traffic), and dirty (polluted)”. Indonesians drive the sentiment home with a common saying: “Go to Jakarta to work. Go anywhere else to live.”

At the heart of our problem was (and still is) a lack of general infrastructure. Jakarta’s urban planners designed relatively few main roads with many smaller, branching feeder roads. What few signs and traffic lights exist are only along the main roads. Thus traffic going to and from the feeder roads is a constant stop-and-go affair. It is usually only directed by men and women who appoint themselves as traffic controllers and collect money while standing in front of cars.

Additionally, the streets were neither designed for large vehicles nor high capacity. Indonesia’s middle class has ballooned over the last decade. Their desire for cars & SUVs (in indonesian: “mobil”) have ballooned with it. Social status and mobil size are generally positively correlated - and in the East, status is everything.

Most importantly, the number one rule of traffic throughout Indonesia is…. there is no rule. Pedestrians cross wherever and whenever they want. Drivers will make their own lanes in order to jockey for position. Scooters and motorcycles alike alight onto the sidewalk when the street is not moving. I mentioned in The Inevitable Traffic Comparison that I felt safer in Indonesia than in America. Part of that is that drivers are hyper-aware because pedestrians and other drivers do as they damn well please. The other part is that traffic is slow enough that it’s hard to be fatally hit by the average vehicle.

Thus, Edder and I zipped along the main road to JIS on his moped (in Indonesian, “motor”). Until we did not. There motors and mobils proceeded at a crawl. We crept forward another half kilometer saturated with idling engine noise and exhaust fumes. It turned out that much of the center of said road was taken up by a growing caravan of humanity who were all supposedly now walking to JIS to support Anies. Hundreds of motor drivers had perpendicularly parked their bikes on both sides of the main road. We followed suit, of course. Illegality matters little if everyone else is doing it.

~3.5 kilometers

We gingerly stepped off Edder’s motor so as not to cause the adjacent motors to fall like dominoes. The human stream lazily flowed towards JIS. Whole families of Anies supporters walked alongside us, each family member clad in pro-Anies tees. Childrens’ laughter occasionally punctuated the gentle susurrus of chatter as they ran through the crowd. A solitary street preacher loudly extolled Anies’ virtues, the first “real president” in a long line of “fake presidents”.

Opportunistic entrepreneurs lined the street. Men carried snacks and signs for cold water. Ladies sold prepackaged food. Other vendors sold curiously incongruent items. Some vendors offered belts and sunglasses. Others displayed silicone cell-phone protectors. Several were hawking pro-Palestine flags, scarves, headscarves, and tees. The only notable absence from the vendor list was pro-Anies merchandise.

The entire affair felt like a cross between a peaceful demonstration march and a street festival. The only odd thing about it was its lack of intention. It was this way only because everyone was forced to walk starting at the 3.5 kilometer mark. I am not a lazy man, but I will gripe if I am forced to walk where I ought to be driving. I’m pretty sure Edder and the Indonesians present took the entire thing in stride far easier than I did. The number one rule of life in Indonesia is: There is no rule.

~3 Kilometers

The vendors thinned out considerably, replaced by growing numbers of Anies supporters. Then we came upon the root of the backup: cars had parked on the main road! The main road is a four-lane affair, two in each direction and divided by the massive cement supports of an overpass. The two lanes heading towards JIS were full of parked cars and SUVS. Motors had parked perpendicular, their rear tires in the narrow shoulder and their front tires on the sidewalk. An entire two rows of motors had also parked in the divider between opposing lanes.

~2.5 Kilometers

The main road at the 3 kilometer mark was overloaded with parked cars, parked motors, and groups of people shuffling in between. Edder and I were caught in the riptide of humanity, swept inexorably away from the safety of the edges and carried towards JIS. We shuffled forward the next half kilometer at a snail’s pace.

Taxi drivers slept in their cars, engines on idle to keep the AC switched on. More economically-minded drivers turned off their cars and opened the windows. Between the hot sun and the sheer amount of humanity, those cars became large mobile ovens with cross-ventilation. Their drivers were certainly roasting in their own juices.

It was now 8:30 in the morning and the sun was out in full force. The crowd became densely packed as we walked. We could only shuffle forward about 12 inches per step. The air was hot and thick with humidity and dust. Undercurrents of sweaty, unwashed humanity, errant car fumes, and a polluted river hung in the air. Maybe the resultant miasma caused my mind a moment of panic. I thought that Edder and I would surely die if the crowd stampeded. We would simply be trampled into paste, caught as we were in the middle of this ocean of humanity. In the best alternative, we would be pushed into the dirty river and then slowly waste away from pollution or mutant brain-eating amoebas. I was ready to wave the white flag. I just needed a good reason to do it.

It was clear we had no way to simply turn around or even eventually shift towards the edge. The tide deposited us on the concrete divider between the opposing lanes. It was full of parked motorbikes. Edder sat on one and motioned me to sit on another.

“Thanks for looking out for grandpa.”

8:30am-9:00am

A group of young men passed wearing white tees that said, “Wakanda No More, Indonesia Forever!” I had seen those around but had no clue how the fictional African kingdom was tied to Indonesia. Or of said fictional African Kingdom’s sudden demise. Edder laughed. “So a lot of people were talking about Indonesia’s problems on the internet, but you know the new law about criminalizing criticism of the government… so instead of using ‘Indonesia’ they called it ‘Wakanda’. Anies promised that he will allow free speech if he becomes president. So he said that [pointing to the shirts].” I nodded my head in appreciation of Indonesian netizens’ ingenuity.

The hardliners began to chant Sholawat Nabi (one of many prayer chants). Perhaps they wanted to encourage the masses of Islamic faithful as they tiredly shuffled to JIS. We sat on our respective motorbikes owned by other people and listened in silence for a few cycles. It was beautiful to listen to, though I’m not sure it energized the masses. They certainly could not have moved faster if they were.

Then came an extended golf cart with side-seating, 20+ ladies in matching white and navy blue hijabs with matching bags. They had managed to stay in their vehicle by traveling up the opposing lane. Every lady smiled serenely and chatted with her neighbor as their vehicle slowly crawled towards JIS.

I wondered what would have happened if there were cars leaving JIS. It was rather a moot point. All four lanes were equally full of pedestrians heading to JIS. I also supposed that the crowds already there were so thick that whoever tried to leave would most likely surrender to inertia. Much like us.

9:00am - 9:30am

The masses grew into a dense, nigh impenetrable, but fluid mass that inexorably plodded in one direction. I supposed that no one else had friends on the inside to tell them that the lot was full and the gates were closed. Or maybe they didn’t care. Support by proximity was good enough.

An ambulance crawled up the opposing traffic lane about fifteen minutes after the luxury golf cart. The driver turned on his lights and half-heartedly twittered his siren after he stopped making headway. The crowd did not (or could not) make way. The ambulance driver turned onto a side road, backed into the main street, and reversed its course. That is, it started down the same street in the correct orientation and proceeded counter-flow to Anies’ faithful thousands. I hoped the ambulance was not actually necessary. Medical emergency from panicked trampling or heat exhaustion were distinct possibilities.