Ronna Nirmala – While other gubernatorial candidates have been busy touting fixes for Jakarta's transportation and urban planning woes, Hidayat Nur Wahid sees an opportunity to address the city's underlying social problems through religion.
The Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) legislator's vision is to improve interfaith relations by, among other things, reviving the city's Interreligious Communications Forum (FKUB), which he says has not been working all that well recently.
The forum, which brings together community leaders from all faiths, should be used to promote dialogue that will strengthen relations between people of different religions, Hidayat said during a visit to the BeritaSatu Media Holdings office on Tuesday. "Our aim is to create a religious way of life that's beautiful," he said.
He also promised to "turn houses of worship into places that people would be happy to visit." "We'll offer incentives to the people managing houses of worship so that more people regularly come there," he said. "The idea is to make these places their primary gathering spot."
The wider goal, Hidayat added, was to instill a greater sense of faith in Jakarta residents. People with a strong faith, he argued, would be disinclined to commit crime, take part in brawls, join violent gangs, experiment with drugs or engage in any of the other social ills reportedly commonplace in the capital.
Hidayat, who previously addressed the perennial problem of flooding, also offered up a solution for Jakarta's shortage of clean water. "Jakarta gets two billion cubic meters of rainfall [sic] a year, of which 1.4 billion washes out to sea without any attempt to retain it," he said. The demand could be met simply by retaining a higher proportion of the rainwater runoff, he proposed.
He said that if elected governor in the polls in July, he would make this happen by designating certain parts of the city as flood plains where the runoff could pool.
Despite offering a variety of solutions for the city's problems, Hidayat called on voters not to get sold on the proposals being bandied about by the candidates.
He also warned that any candidate claiming to have all the answers to Jakarta-specific problems such as traffic, flooding, urban planning and poverty might make a good technocrat but a poor leader.
Hidayat is contesting the election with Didik Junaedi Rachbini, a politician from the National Mandate Party (PAN).
A poll released earlier this month by the Indonesian Survey Circle (LSI) showed the pair in third place with the support of just 8.3 percent of respondents. The incumbent, Fauzi Bowo, leads the field with 49.1 percent, followed by Solo Mayor Joko Widodo with 14.4 percent.