Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, Jakarta – Newly installed Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Adang Firman was right when he pledged that combating thuggery would be a priority during his tenure.
But there are question marks on whether he will have the courage to succeed where his predecessors did not.
Criminal undercurrents are a persistent hazard in any metropolitan. They breed insecurity, lawlessness and a high-cost economy through rampant illegal levies.
But two groups – that shall be arrantly nameless in this article – in particular embody the unified loathing of decent Jakartans.
Unlike other delinquent elements which operate in Jakarta's underworld, these two groups sought to ascend and even legitimize their hooliganism using ethnic or religious platforms.
Despite their small numbers, they cannot be dismissed as marauding thugs. The freedom of voraciousness accorded to them has hijacked national headlines and been falsely gauged as predicators of Indonesia's radicalism.
Their desire to go 'legit' is only natural, since the seeds of their past were political. Both groups were formed as an outgrowth of the New Order's culture of using paramilitary groups as vehicles for political coercion. Hence the suspicion of past connections to the military and police.
The first group was set up as part of the political maneuvering to counter student demonstrations ahead of the 1999 Special Session of the People's Consultative Assembly and adopted an extremely conservative religious ideological platform.
As a current Cabinet minister privately revealed when he spoke about the group: "I can say with confidence, although I cannot provide legal evidence, that the commander of the (Jakarta) police force at that time had links (with this group)".
As the group developed, it exploited narrow-minded religiosity to justify sweepings and to ransack bars and nightclubs during Ramadhan.
There have been allegations that this was simply a camouflage to extort money from gambling and prostitution businesses. When issues of sharia became vogue a few years later they were well placed in the front lines of the sectarian push, being able to mobilize the masses of urban poor who had joined their ranks.
The second group paints itself as the footmen for Jakarta's disenfranchised indigenous population. However it is not itself a member of the Betawi Consultative Body – an umbrella organization of ethnic Betawi organizations.
Despite its ethnic platform, it began as an anti-Megawati Soekarnoputri movement. Its chairman was a member of the non-Megawati splinter faction of the now defunct Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI).
The group's birth coincided with a commemoration by Megawati's supporters of the fifth anniversary of the bloody attack on PDI headquarters. By coincidence, the Jakarta military commander at the time of the attack was none other than Sutiyoso.
Based in East Jakarta, the group quickly attracted the urban poor by means of providing them jobs and capital in the informal economy.
It is worth noting that the group was established on the heels of a campaign by the local administration to fight street gangs by "reintegrating" them into society with jobs such as local guards.
What effectively occurred was an opportunity to be seized to "cooperate" with the local administration who allocated billions of rupiah for this program.
Where the new Jakarta Police chief's political allegiance lies with respect to these groups is unknown.
But Adang cannot afford to emulate the lethargy of his predecessors. These two groups have become a malignant cancer that will be detrimental to Jakarta's stability and his own career.
Unlike New Order paramilitaries, both groups act independently without a major financial backer or political patron. They are pendulous entities whose allegiances are indiscriminate according to the necessities of survival.
Both groups fend for themselves to sustain the economic needs of their expanding ranks. Without political money flowing in, these groups survive on various small ventures and levies they are able to collect.
Nevertheless these sectors are unsustainable. They will need to "expand and diversify" into more lucrative avocations – both formal and illegal. This will eventually lead to the encroachment on "activities" traditionally monopolized by underworld mobs.
Debt collecting, for example, is one lucrative field in which these two groups still have a limited foothold but must begin to consider if they are to augment their coffers.
Hence the prospect of socio-religious gang wars on the horizon if nothing is done. Shades of the 1998 Ketapang riot in West Jakarta come to mind.