Jakartass Home thoughts from abroad. Alien thoughts from home.

The banner headline in today’s Jakarta Post is Pray For Japan, thus quite properly relegating the otherwise prime domestic issue of the Wikileak about the First Family’s alleged rent seeking to the bottom of the page.

Apart from the immediate tsunami warning for the eastern parts of this vast archipelago, Indonesia appears to have come through relatively unscathed, although there is as yet liitle news of possible casualties among the many students and businessfolk currently in Japan.

Two who were in Tokyo, apparently to attend Middle East Peace talks – go figure! – are former Vice-President Jusuf Kalla and his business crony Sofjan Wanandi. Kalla said yesterday that contrary to the Wikileaks allegation of graft, what he did was normal practice, so that’s all right then. Wanandi, currently Chairman of the Indonesian Employer’s Association (APINDO), is head of the Gemala Group conglomerate which has strong ties with the Indonesian military (TNI) dating back to the Suharto era when he was the spokesman for the dictator’s major business cronies. The military are supposed to have turned over their business empire to the state, but haven’t – yet?

But that’s all a side issue when we consider what lessons, if any, that Indonesia can take from Japan’s latest natural disaster.

Firstly, the earthquake itself has caused far less damage than we could expect here. Strict by-laws and architectural innovation have ensured that new buildings in Japan can withstand quakes of massive magnitude. Can the same be said for Indonesian conurbations, particularly Jakarta?

Major quakes caused immense damage to Batavia/Jakarta in 1699, 1780, 1883 and 1903. Given the encyclical nature of – erm – Mother Nature, every hundred years or so. the city can expect another one relatively soon.

The capital city is built on a floodplain, on silt above soft, rather than hard, rocks  and has subsided two metres in the past 20 years. If a quake has its epicentre close to the surface, it would amplify the seismic effect and the sub-strata would most probably liquefy, thus further weakening foundations; we can expect many tower blocks to topple.

Given its record, can we realistically expect City Hall to enforce the necessary building regulations?

Another lesson to be learned from the Japanese quake is that a nuclear power plant can never be 100% safe.

The Japanese government has declared a nuclear emergency, and the trade minister admitted that a radiation leak was a distinct possibility as concerns mounted that the cooling system at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station, with two reactors, had failed. There are also reports of a breakdown in the cooling systems in three of four reactors at Fukushima-Daini.

This has grave implications for the integrity of hundreds of tonnes of radioactive fuel at the site [and] the sight of 2,800 local residents forced to flee their homes evoked the scenes after the Chernobyl accident in the Ukraine, almost exactly 25 years ago.

This should put the lie to the nuclear engineering major who wrote to the Post in January asserting that nuclear power is safe.

Japan has been able to build nuclear reactors that are earthquake resistant [and] have passive systems that make the Three Mile Island incident impossible.

As stock markets and insurers feel the pinch in the aftermath of the quake, it should serve as a reminder to all that we have to live with the consquences of feeling superior to life forces.

I’ve long argued that we should work with Mother Nature rather than tinker with its workings. Indonesia has geo-thermal, solar and hydro electric generating options, none of which would have such horrific consequences as Japan now faces with its dependence on nuclear energy.