by T.C. Scott
One of my favourite scenes in Jakarta has disappeared: The weekly street festival outside the South Jakarta Court in Jalan Ampera on traffic offences day on Tuesday mornings. Sure it was one of Jakarta’s worst traffic jams but it vibrated with visual and aural fun. Not like your standard Jakarta traffic jam creeping along in the pollution with your aircon slowly fading and surrounded by irritable drivers over anxious to get to work
Here outside the court precincts there were painted transvestite singers, mini-bands, tasty morning snacks at reasonable prices, coffee, magazine sellers, beggars and of course ubiquitous brokers ready to cut a deal with the judges’s associates on your traffic offence and hundreds of motorbikes milling around. For me it was a pleasure to pass by and perhaps buy a bacan or fried banana (pisgor which to my ear sounds like some hideous urinary infection) and some coffee. Sadly your standard Jakarta traffic jam does not provide this kind of deluxe three-star service.
This has all gone I gather because a year or so back when on his first day the newly appointed chief judge was aggressively accosted by a broker claiming to be able to fix his traffic fine. Now the brokers are apparently gone so the money has gone and so has the music.
For many years I thought this street’s name - Jalan Ampera - was something to do with PLN – the state electricity company (ampere being the standard unit of electrical current). However later I discovered it was an abbreviation for Amanat Penderitaan Rakyat – The Message of the People’s Suffering - deriving from one of Bung Karno’s great presidential speeches of the early sixties. Now the traffic offenders suffer – no money, no music, no makan kecil and no doubt those inside the court house suffer too.
In a quantum leap of fancy I wondered what sort of music these recently exposed high-flying corrupt officials purchased? In a cynical snarl I thought probably pirate CDs from the sidewalks at Blok M! With their sort of money they could afford to put on a charity opera night at La Scala! So the old adage – “Where there is money there is music” - probably only rings true for your average person - the likes of you and me.
PS Traffic offences are now dealt with on Friday mornings. So avoid Ampera that day.
(Tim Scott is a Daily Avocado Contributor. Thanks Tim)
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