Indonesia’s new capital of Nusantara hosts curtailed Independence Day celebrations
Indonesia marked 79 years of independence on Saturday with a ceremony in the unfinished future capital of Nusantara, which was planned to relieve pressure on Jakarta but whose construction has lagged behind schedule.
Hundreds of officials and invited guests wearing the traditional clothes of Indonesian tribes gathered on a stretch of grass amid the ongoing construction of government buildings and view of construction cranes in the centre of the Nusantara city.
President Joko Widodo and his cabinet ministers attended the Independence Day ceremony at the new Presidential Palace, built in the shape of the mythical eagle-winged protector figure called Garuda.
The celebration was initially planned to inaugurate Nusantara as the country’s new capital, but with construction behind schedule it’s not clear when the transfer will take place.
Widodo said earlier in the week that 8,000 guests would be invited, but the number was later reduced to 1,300 because adequate infrastructure was not yet in place.
The celebration at the new State Palace on the island of Borneo was held simultaneously with a celebration at the Merdeka Palace in Jakarta that was attended by Vice-President Ma’ruf Amin.
Widodo began working at the new presidential palace in Nusantara in late July and held his first Cabinet meeting there on Tuesday.
More than 5,000 officers from Indonesia’s police and military were deployed for the ceremony and 76 honorary flag-bearers marched behind the national red-and-white banner.
Jakarta, with about 10 million people in the city limits and three times that number in the greater metropolitan area, floods regularly and its streets are so clogged that congestion costs the economy an estimated $4.5 billion a year.
The air and groundwater