By Raafi Seiff, Jakarta
I had an appointment to interview the ambassador of Belgium to Indonesia. Unfortunately, it was on the day when a part of Jakarta was in turmoil.
I opened my weary and overused Uber application and was shocked at how, on a regularly busy Tuesday, March 22, there was only one driver to be found on the app. He came, ruffled, odorous and jittery. He seemed nervous. He told me that there was a huge riot in Jakarta where Ubers, Bluebirds, Grabs and Go-Jeks were being “swept”. I shrugged it off, assuring him that it was all an exaggeration.
As we drove to the embassy, he repeatedly fumbled with the radio that was reporting were the supposed demonstrations were to be found and was receiving calls from his boss telling him to end the trip. Confusion surfaced in me. What was happening? When I finally reached Jakarta I saw a collision of the mentioned competitors attacking one another and — at times — their own colleagues.
I took my Uber driver’s phone and hid it my bag just in case we were approached. After seeing people throwing rocks and passengers being taken out of their taxis, it was then I realized that Jakarta — in that moment — was in anarchy.
There was a lingering feeling of trepidation at the sight of this chaos, but this was definitely not shocking to any person watching over the situation. Surprise was the last word in anyone’s mind. This clash was an expected climax that was communicated through the intense communal brawls that have occurred since the rise of these app-based transportation companies.
What was surprising however, was the lack of effective response in real-time. The government should have expected this to have occurred and understood the need for contingency planning to contain the situation. Is the turun tangan (go to the field) method no longer a special move of the Joko “Jokowi” Widodo administration?
On the other hand, we should acknowledge that there were efforts made by the employees of the transportation companies involved in brokering peace. If you go around areas in Pasar Minggu, for example, you would find banners stating words like “This is a Go-Jek-ojek zone. Embrace each other”. This movement sings our ideological values as a nation as well as of individuals who are, at the end of the day, all just trying to make something of themselves.
Companies — which are usually supposed to be the foundations that characterize their employees — in this instance must learn from groups like these and instill this as a general corporate culture.
In light of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), innovation should be what makes us and not what breaks us. How can Indonesia become open and competitive if we ourselves are the ones who shun ideas that are outside the box?
This indicates that some Indonesian institutions are still traditionalist and even feudal in nature when it comes to doing business and working with the government. These archaic companies have been so used to being at the top that they feel threatened with stakeholders who bring new ideas.
How could they not? It must be humiliating for companies that have designed and established empires to their taste to find themselves pushed around and forced to play ball with start-up companies with an approach that might never have survived if it had had to jump through the hoops of the New Order.
Empires should reform in the midst of change and accept certain losses as an inevitability, shifting their problems into new ways to grow. Look at Newsweek, which ceased to be printed in the beginning of 2013 or Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSLO), which was bought in 2015.
Regardless of their acquired credibility, what these two companies had was a brand, power and sophisticated history that consumers could dive into. They had failed to prolong themselves in their prime, but rather than sink they chose to swim. Newsweek pulled through by using an online platform exclusively and MSLO was able to find security in its new owners, Sequential Brands.
The point is that Indonesian companies that have been too comfortable relying on favors, strong branding and the security of being “the only option” need to understand that those days are fading because of the dynamics of a more connected and digital society.
What’s important right now is that we bring back a state of strength for the involved stakeholders. At a time when investors are fidgeting in their seats in a promising but uncertain AEC, Indonesia as a founding father of ASEAN should show solidarity in its domestic affairs.
What is the point of economic success if it leads to anarchy? The government should establish a taskforce involving members of the private and public sector, as well as civil society, in which they can first show that competition is something that we should allow and not a force that should be shut down.
Going through the legal context of these transportation companies would require a whole different conversation and perception, but what has been acknowledged by even the Jokowi administration (with the minister of communications and information calling Go-Jek’s CEO his “mentor”) is that these mobile-app juggernauts are becoming a source of income that has established formidable underground economies.
Will relevant stakeholders continue to encourage entrepreneurship and job creation or stop innovation in its tracks? The government has an obvious mandate to deem illegal whatever it feels threatens the stability of the country or is sidelined by the law (as was already stated many times by government officials), but in doing so, the government has to answer to householders who will lose jobs and sources of income in the middle of a situation of rising unemployment and stagnated growth.
________________________________
The writer is founder and executive director of the Good Governance Initiative. - See more at: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/03/30/a-capital-divided-anarchy-digital-age.html#sthash.E5OX4rbG.dpuf
I had an appointment to interview the ambassador of Belgium to Indonesia. Unfortunately, it was on the day when a part of Jakarta was in turmoil.
I opened my weary and overused Uber application and was shocked at how, on a regularly busy Tuesday, March 22, there was only one driver to be found on the app. He came, ruffled, odorous and jittery. He seemed nervous. He told me that there was a huge riot in Jakarta where Ubers, Bluebirds, Grabs and Go-Jeks were being “swept”. I shrugged it off, assuring him that it was all an exaggeration.
As we drove to the embassy, he repeatedly fumbled with the radio that was reporting were the supposed demonstrations were to be found and was receiving calls from his boss telling him to end the trip. Confusion surfaced in me. What was happening? When I finally reached Jakarta I saw a collision of the mentioned competitors attacking one another and — at times — their own colleagues.
I took my Uber driver’s phone and hid it my bag just in case we were approached. After seeing people throwing rocks and passengers being taken out of their taxis, it was then I realized that Jakarta — in that moment — was in anarchy.
There was a lingering feeling of trepidation at the sight of this chaos, but this was definitely not shocking to any person watching over the situation. Surprise was the last word in anyone’s mind. This clash was an expected climax that was communicated through the intense communal brawls that have occurred since the rise of these app-based transportation companies.
What was surprising however, was the lack of effective response in real-time. The government should have expected this to have occurred and understood the need for contingency planning to contain the situation. Is the turun tangan (go to the field) method no longer a special move of the Joko “Jokowi” Widodo administration?
On the other hand, we should acknowledge that there were efforts made by the employees of the transportation companies involved in brokering peace. If you go around areas in Pasar Minggu, for example, you would find banners stating words like “This is a Go-Jek-ojek zone. Embrace each other”. This movement sings our ideological values as a nation as well as of individuals who are, at the end of the day, all just trying to make something of themselves.
Companies — which are usually supposed to be the foundations that characterize their employees — in this instance must learn from groups like these and instill this as a general corporate culture.
In light of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), innovation should be what makes us and not what breaks us. How can Indonesia become open and competitive if we ourselves are the ones who shun ideas that are outside the box?
This indicates that some Indonesian institutions are still traditionalist and even feudal in nature when it comes to doing business and working with the government. These archaic companies have been so used to being at the top that they feel threatened with stakeholders who bring new ideas.
How could they not? It must be humiliating for companies that have designed and established empires to their taste to find themselves pushed around and forced to play ball with start-up companies with an approach that might never have survived if it had had to jump through the hoops of the New Order.
Empires should reform in the midst of change and accept certain losses as an inevitability, shifting their problems into new ways to grow. Look at Newsweek, which ceased to be printed in the beginning of 2013 or Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSLO), which was bought in 2015.
Regardless of their acquired credibility, what these two companies had was a brand, power and sophisticated history that consumers could dive into. They had failed to prolong themselves in their prime, but rather than sink they chose to swim. Newsweek pulled through by using an online platform exclusively and MSLO was able to find security in its new owners, Sequential Brands.
The point is that Indonesian companies that have been too comfortable relying on favors, strong branding and the security of being “the only option” need to understand that those days are fading because of the dynamics of a more connected and digital society.
What’s important right now is that we bring back a state of strength for the involved stakeholders. At a time when investors are fidgeting in their seats in a promising but uncertain AEC, Indonesia as a founding father of ASEAN should show solidarity in its domestic affairs.
What is the point of economic success if it leads to anarchy? The government should establish a taskforce involving members of the private and public sector, as well as civil society, in which they can first show that competition is something that we should allow and not a force that should be shut down.
Going through the legal context of these transportation companies would require a whole different conversation and perception, but what has been acknowledged by even the Jokowi administration (with the minister of communications and information calling Go-Jek’s CEO his “mentor”) is that these mobile-app juggernauts are becoming a source of income that has established formidable underground economies.
Will relevant stakeholders continue to encourage entrepreneurship and job creation or stop innovation in its tracks? The government has an obvious mandate to deem illegal whatever it feels threatens the stability of the country or is sidelined by the law (as was already stated many times by government officials), but in doing so, the government has to answer to householders who will lose jobs and sources of income in the middle of a situation of rising unemployment and stagnated growth.
________________________________
The writer is founder and executive director of the Good Governance Initiative. - See more at: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/03/30/a-capital-divided-anarchy-digital-age.html#sthash.E5OX4rbG.dpuf