Indonesia yesterday celebrated its independence anniversary at the site of its planned new capital, Nusantara, for the first time, in a scaled-back ceremony as the city, which is still under construction, is beset by problems and faces delays.
A legacy project of outgoing Indonesian President Joko Widodo, Nusantara has experienced construction delays and funding shortages due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a lack of foreign investment and more recently, resignations of project leaders.
In yesterday’s celebration of the country’s independence from Japanese rule that ended in 1945, the number of attendees was cut to 1,300 guests, down from an initial 8,000, as lodgings and food supply were limited, Widodo said earlier this week.
Photo: Reuters
Hundreds of attendees from local communities and construction workers attended the ceremony under red umbrellas, with several under-construction buildings standing behind them.
Mulyana, a 38-year-old construction worker at the new capital, said he spent the past nine months working to construct a ministry office building that was partially used for yesterday’s celebration amid limited infrastructure to move the materials.
“For five months we worked in 24-hour shifts. Due to limited access we need two to three hours [daily] to move the concrete using heavy equipment,” Mulyana, who like many Indonesians has a single name, said on Friday.
When he came a year earlier, water and electricity supply were limited at the site, Mulyana added.
Nusantara is being built in a forested pocket on the eastern side of the island of Borneo, about 1,200km from the current capital, Jakarta, on the island of Java.
Jokowi has sought to shore up confidence in the US$32 billion mega-project in the past few months, breaking ground for hotels and office buildings and holding the first cabinet meeting in the eagle-shaped new state palace.
However, he has also said plans to relocate thousands of civil servants to Nusantara could be postponed, subject to the readiness of the capital city, after previously ordering them to pack up and move in September.
Incoming Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto, who also attended the ceremony, has promised to continue Nusantara.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS