The president earlier this week flew to the city of Balikpapan in East Kalimantan Province, in the Indonesian part of Borneo island, where NU was holding a ceremony to inaugurate members of its new national executive board.
The Muslim group declared a plan to build a main office near the proposed site of new capital Nusantara in Penajam Paser Utara regency, just next to Balikpapan.
Widodo told the inauguration ceremony on Monday that he would grant NU a “big (land) concession”, although it was not clear if that plot would be for the NU office in Penajam.
Yahya Cholil Staquf, the newly elected chairman of NU, applauded the government’s decision to move the capital as an “out-of-the-box” proposal.
“It’s becoming clearer and clearer that building a new capital here in East Kalimantan … will be an effective initiative to develop a better future for this nation,” Staquf said during the ceremony which was also attended by Vice-President Ma’ruf Amin, a senior NU cleric.
NU with its traditional Indonesian brand of Islam is the largest Muslim group in the world’s most populous Muslim nation, with tens of millions of followers across the archipelago.
Its support for Widodo since the 2014 presidential election was a key reason for the former furniture maker’s win then and in 2019. Widodo announced the capital relocation plan after his reelection.
The plan had been put on the back burner since the beginning of the pandemic, but parliament’s passage of the law on the new capital city on Jan 18 – which includes naming it Nusantara – has put it back in motion.
Despite rising numbers of Covid cases driven by the Omicron variant in Jakarta and some other parts of Java island, preparatory works have been ongoing in Penajam.
These works include the building of basic infrastructures such as a dam for clean water supply and access roads through a vast acacia and eucalyptus plantation that will host a new presidential palace and other government offices.
The government is preparing regulations to accelerate development, including the planned establishment of the Nusantara Capital City Authority.
An initial clause in the law has been removed that required the capital relocation to start in the first half of 2024, when Indonesia will elect its new president.
But officials in Jakarta said they were still aiming to have the new palace ready for the Independence Day ceremony on Aug 17, 2024, just a few months before Widodo’s tenure ends.
The law, however, has sparked wider controversies, with critics questioning the urgency of the move and calling it a waste of money – in addition to concerns over potential impacts on the environment and indigenous people in East Kalimantan.
In Balikpapan, Widodo met with representatives of indigenous communities including heads of the Kutai Kertanegara and Paser sultanates.
Although these small kingdoms were established centuries ago, like others scattered across the Indonesian archipelago, the sultanates have little power apart from some cultural influence over their territories.
After the meeting, Kutai Sultan Muhammad Arifin said he “fully supports” the move.
Paser Sultan Muhammad Jarnawi similarly said the sultanate “enthusiastically welcomes” the plan and hopes that the new capital “will be immediately built” – but reminded the government to protect the forests.
Representatives of some other indigenous groups, including the Dayak Kenya and Banjar, asked the government to involve their people in building Nusantara.
“The capital city development will be a long-term work – probably won’t finish in five to 15 years,” said Syarifuddin HR, head of a Banjar group.
“We’re only asking the president to please pay attention to our human resources so that our brothers, our (young) generation can later compete … with newcomers from elsewhere.”
In Jakarta, the controversy around the capital relocation has taken a new twist with the recent arrest of Edy Mulyadi, a former politician of the opposition Prosperous Justice Party, or PKS, over alleged insults of Kalimantan people.
In a video that went viral in which he criticised the move, Mulyadi baselessly said that the new capital development was part of China’s covert operations to install its citizens there.
He said, “(The capital) will be moved to a place where genies dump kids,” citing an Indonesian proverb commonly used to refer to remote and desolate places.
“It’s probably OK to build there if their (target) market is kuntilanak and genderuwo,” he added, referring to evil creatures in local urban legends.
Police said several reports were filed against Mulyadi, including from Kalimantan communities and a member of the Great Indonesia Movement Party, chaired by Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto, whom Mulyadi also criticised in his video.
Police said he was facing up to 10 years in prison for allegedly inciting hatred and causing a racket.
A survey by Jakarta-based pollster KedaiKOPI in December found only 38% of 1,200 respondents nationwide approved of the capital move, with the rest rejecting the plan.