Tulisan mengenai Tri Rismaharini di buat oleh Founding Chairman, Business Executives for National Security huffingtonpost.com, Stanley Weiss. Untuk tulisan aslinya silahkan cek disini
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Surabaya, Indonesia--Here, in Indonesia's second-largest city, legend tells
of a titanic battle between Sura, the great white shark, and Baya, the
crocodile. Meeting in a river one day, the two creatures fought
ferociously for supremacy of the animal kingdom. The place where they
clashed became known as "Surabaya," the city of the shark and the
crocodile, emblematic of the repeated waves of colonial sharks and
crocodiles that have controlled the city for centuries.
Settled in the late 1200's on the northern shore of East Java,
Surabaya rose to become a major Southeast Asian port and trading center, frequently fought over
and eventually controlled by the Dutch East Indies Company for over
three centuries. The Dutch surrendered to Japanese troops in 1942, who
occupied the country until their surrender to the Allies in 1945.
After the nationalist leader, Sukarno, declared Indonesia's
independence on August 17, 1945, violence broke out between Indonesian
freedom fighters and the Dutch and British, who returned to the country
to take possession of Allied prisoners of war. A British
brigadier-general was killed in the crossfire, and the enraged British attacked Surabaya.
The bloody Battle of Surabaya is celebrated as a turning point in
Indonesia's war of independence. Ever since, Indonesians have called it
"the City of Heroes."
Today, Surabaya has a new hero in the form of its hands-on mayor,
Tri Rismaharini, who is breathing new life into the city. Better known
as "Ibu Risma"--"Mother Risma"--Surabaya's mayor is part of a rising
generation of new leaders, empowered by the decentralization of
authority across Indonesia and ready to seize the reins of national
leadership.
Many mornings at 5:30am, "Mrs. Mayor" can be found picking up trash
along the roadside. In the afternoons, she hands out balls to children
in the parks while reminding them to study hard. At night, she patrols
the parks, scolding underage youth for breaking curfew. If traffic gets
snarled, she's been known to get out of her car and direct it herself.
She also hosts a radio call-in show, fielding questions about evictions,
clogged drains, and the occasional obscenity.
An architecture major, Risma rose to prominence in 2005 as head of
the city parks department. Long known as an unlovely industrial
port--one Dutch novelist called it "a dirty city full of pretensions and
greed"--Surabaya under Risma has become "Sparkling Surabaya."
At her direction,
brothels have been converted into kindergartens and old gas station
lots into playgrounds. Banners bearing anti-littering slogans hang
throughout the city, winning Surabaya a dozen environmental awards as a
pioneering eco-city while inspiring the local populace: last year,
Surabaya was named the city with the best public participation in Asia Pacific.
Though parks are her passion, Risma speaks proudly of her
administration's program to provide free education and healthcare for
the underprivileged--all the while streamlining the city's bureaucracy
to eliminate inefficiency. The daughter of small business owners, Risma
travels widely to other cities to study successful public innovations,
adopting improved streetlights from Berlin and better teaching
techniques from Seoul.
One of her main goals is to develop not just the city's
infrastructure and economy, but also its people, through education and
awareness programs--spending 35 percent of Surabaya's budget on
education, far higher than the national standard.
"I don't really understand practical politics," Risma
confesses--somewhat surprisingly given her achievements. And it's true
that she was almost removed
in her first year as mayor, after she angered entrenched interests with
a proposal to raise tariffs on large billboards while lowering them for
small business advertisements. When she was head of the city's building
development, Risma and her family received death threats for
implementing the country's first completely transparent, e-procurement
system. Yet the system, in her words "saved anywhere from 20%-25%,"
while freeing up resources to build "better quality roads, new bridges
and pedestrian areas."
Risma has forged important partnerships with the private sector, and
is savvy navigating the country's bureaucracy. On just her second day in
office, Risma visited Indonesia's vice president to discuss a critical
port development project that had languished for decades. Despite
repeated efforts to brush her off, Risma refused to leave the office
until they agreed to begin construction.
The port groundbreaking took place a week later--and not a moment too soon. Surabaya's port has experienced a 200 percent increase
in traffic in recent years. The improvements will boost efficiency and
increase capacity as the port continues to serve as a gateway to other
parts of the country.
Risma has also met with Belgian officials to discuss a potential "sister city agreement"
between Surabaya and Antwerp, home to one of Europe's most important
seaports. It would evolve the current system by allowing cargo to bypass
Singapore, greatly reducing shipping fees between the two ports while
making them more competitive.
It is creative ideas like these that have helped boost Surabaya's economic growth to over 7.5 percent since Risma took office in 2010--while earning her Globe Asia's prestigious 2012 Women Leader Award.
It has also led some to wonder if Risma's combination of understated
competence and leadership are precisely the qualities that Indonesia
most needs as it begins to emerge on the world stage. As Tempo magazine
put it in a recent profile of Risma,
the solution to Indonesia's problems may lie in the "inspirational"
work of Indonesia's political outsiders, though "their names do not
appear on the front pages of the national media and the regions they
govern are far from the glitz of Jakarta."
"I don't have political ambitions," Risma insists. "To become a
mayor, governor or even president is an extraordinary responsibility.
It's not just about solving a flood problem or things like that. It's
about helping the people to develop and be successful."
While she speaks, I note the seal of the city of Surabaya--a
battling shark and crocodile. As mayor, Ibu Risma has learned to tame
the clash of fiercely competing interests. What more might she do for
all of Indonesia?
Stanley Weiss, a former global mining CEO and founder of
Washington-based Business Executives for National Security, has been
widely published on domestic and international issues for four decades.
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